Sermon on the Mount

Week 07 – Blessed are those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

Review
The Sermon on the Mount is the core of Jesus’ yoke and if we want to be true Jesus followers, then we
need to understand how to live out his yoke. The main purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to show
how to live a life that God finds pious, that is, how to live out the righteousness of God here on Earth.
To do this, Jesus begins his sermon with the “Principles of the Yoke,” the Beatitudes. Last week we
learned that the while the word “Blessed” literally means “happy,” it is much more than that. It more
closely resembles something akin to “Held in honor by God” or “In a righteous relationship with God.”

Introduction
Today we are going to continue our journey into the Principles of the Yoke by looking at the fourth one,
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

Ice Breaker Question:

Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness

Discussion Question

1. What do the concepts of Hunger and Thirst mean to you?

2. What is something you have really desired? How did that desire motivate you? How did
that desire influence your decision making?
3. What is “righteousness”? What do you think “righteousness” meant to Jesus listeners?
4. What does “righteousness” look like? What do you think “righteousness” looked like to
Jesus’ audience?

The Greek word here for righteousness (dikaiosune) can also be translated as "justification" or "justice."
Righteousness is often understood as "right-relatedness." For this we understand a great part of the
nature of God is God's justice.

One of the things we know is that the Law was given to assist the Jewish people in achieving
righteousness. For example, he Torah teaches righteousness in business relations:

“Do not have two differing weights in your bag—one heavy, one light. Do not have two differing
measures in your house—one large, one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and
measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. For the LORD
your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly...”
Deuteronomy 25:13-16.
The Torah also requires judges to exercise righteousness by being honest.

“Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false
charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. Do
not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent…”
Exodus 23:6-8

Note, that in these examples, righteousness is bound to an individual.

Later, however, the prophet Isaiah emphasized the righteousness of the entire Israelite nation.

Wash and make yourselves clean.

Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”

says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 1:16-20
In the early Jewish mindset, righteousness is closely coupled to the modern tem we call “social justice.”
I’m not a big fan of this word because I believe it has been co-opted by people with a political purpose
to be hammer to beat those who disagree with a specific implementation of this Godly concept. It has
become a new form of a moralistic burden to be placed on the backs of a people. The modernist placed
burdens of specific belief systems and attendance and knowledge and music styles and certain behaviors
(i.e., no drinking, no smoking, no dancing, no card games, no TV, etc…). The emergents and the post-
modernists claim to free an individual from those burdens, only to place a different set of expectations
on an individual. Mostly those burdens center on what “social justice” looks like. However, the ideas
are noble. I am a big fan of living out social justice. The question we have those, is what does that look
like in my life? How much sacrificing is enough?
In both of these cases, people think they possess righteousness by their actions. However, Jesus does
not say that He is looking for people who possess this kind of righteousness, but he is looking for people
who want it desperately but haven’t figured it all out.

To “hunger and thirst for righteousness” is to desire to be Christ–like above all else. Think about the
last time you were really hungry or thirsty. You were distracted from whatever else you were attempting
to do, right? A person who is hungry or thirsty tends to push other things aside. They are desperate and
their top priority is satisfying their hunger or thirst. Similarly, “those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness” put becoming like Jesus Christ first. The result is they will be satisfied.

The natural tendency of mankind, no matter his philosophy or worldview, is to try and impose his belief
system on others. We want to people to think like us. Failing that, we at least want them to act like us.
This is what I see a lot of the emergents doing with “social justice.” This is what I have experienced with
the modernist and religious leaders of my past doing. This is what the Pharisees had done to the
common people of Jesus’ time. They had replaced something noble, the Law, whose purpose was to lift
people up into a righteous relationship with God into something undignified, the Rules, whose purpose
was to keep people in their place. The Law no longer served the people, but the people were now
servants to the Law. By linking righteousness to hunger and thirst, Jesus subverts subservience to the
Law, transforming it into a willing and fervent desire.

I no longer want to help the poor and lost and the oppressed out of pity or out of guilt or out of
obligation or out of duty. I now want to help because I have a deep, insatiable desire to see God’s
Kingdom come. I now hunger and thirst after God’s justice…His righteousness.

Shall be Filled
Discussion Question

1. What does it mean to be filled?

2. What will be filled with?
3. Is there a danger o having our hunger and thirst satiated?

When we seek the righteousness of God, then He will give it to us. It is important to note that this is not
a self-righteousness. Righteousness is something God wants us to have. Self-righteousness, though, is
an abomination to God. So, what is the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness? Well,
obviously, it is the word “self”. A person who upholds a moral system (especially a difficult one) is not
automatically self-righteous. He is only self-righteous if he maintains that he has the power to uphold his
moral system on his own steam or because he is “That Sort of Chap.”

Understanding that the righteousness we want to be filled with cannot come from ourselves, there
remains the question of how do we get this righteousness Jesus wishes us to hunger and thirst for.
Traditionally Christian thought has provided three basic answers to that question. You may recognize
some of these.
The first answer is that of Pelagius, an early theologian from the fourth and fifth century, who said, “We
are sinners because we sin.” His prescription more or less amounts to just saying “Stop it!” and assuring
us that all we have to do is stop our sinful behavior by self-discipline. We are doing nothing more thatn
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, imitate Jesus (who was only sent as a model, not as the source of
righteousness) and we could be perfectly righteous on our own steam. Of course, this theory, is
unfortunately contradicted by the experience every single human being who has ever lived. It is rare
indeed the person who stop sinning just because he wanted to.

Pelagius’ thoughts were contradicted by Augustine, who maintained we sin because we are sinners,
fallen in Adam and unable to save ourselves apart from the grace of Christ. Later scholars, following bits
of Augustine’s thought, offered us another choice. They agreed with Augustine that Pelagius was
misguided about making ourselves righteous by grit, determination, and hard work. Instead, they
concluded from this that righteousness is fundamentally impossible for us to personify.

They adopted a theory of “imputed righteousness” in which, as the classic image put it, salvation is
basically God covering-up the darkness of our everlastingly corrupt humanity with the snow of Christ’s
righteousness. In this view, we remain the rotten bastards we always have been and always will be, but
God “sees Jesus” not us and so pretends that we are righteous. The problem with this theory is, well,
what sort of salvation that is! That doesn’t seem to me to be a righteousness that satisfies. It still feels
incomplete to me. It feels kind of like putting lipstick on pig.

And there’s a reason for that intuition: it’s not really biblical. Christ comes to transform us: to make us
participants in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), not mere darkness covered with snow. True, part of the
salvation process does involve “imputed righteousness”, but that’s not the whole story.

As C.S. Lewis points out, this is how we also raise our children: by treating them as kinder, more
generous, more polite and less self-centered than they really are until, as in Beauty and the Beast, the
face become beautiful in response to the love showered on it. Grace is out to transform us, not merely
put lipstick on a pig.

Ultimately, righteousness is not a concept. It is not a legal fiction. It is not an abstraction. It is not a
moral state. It is not an ideal. It is not a rule, law, or command. Righteousness is a Person named Jesus
Christ. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is, in the end of ends, is to hunger and thirst for Him and
for transformation into the fullness of His image and to be filled with His likeness.

Conclusion
Honored by God are those who have a deep, insatiable desire to see God’s justice come to earth, for
they shall be filled with the character of Jesus.