So given that my name is Mandy. I am on staff here at reality
and have the privilege of sharing from God's word with
you. This morning.
Hopefully, everyone will have Grace towards me.
If like you the daylight savings is kind of impacted my energy
level but we're just gonna lean into the Holy Spirit and trust
that God wants to speak to us this morning.
So yeah, the Beatitudes this has been ton of fun.
We are now halfway through our series.
It's this collection of of the bad attitude are this collection
of as a one author calls, it, Soulful riddles.
I really like that phrasing that are put forward by Jesus at the
beginning of his most famous teaching, The Sermon on the
Mount and the Beatitudes are likely going to capture our
attention. If we have ever wanted our lives
to be hashtag blessed, that's the hook at the beginning.
Of each of these sayings. The word makarios in Greek which
means blessed, happy fortunate, the poet, Elizabeth, Rundle
Charles. Described makarios as a heart in
harmony with itself, a trust content satisfied.
Full of all the music of which the human hearts, are capable,
isn't it? Lovely?
I really like that idea of true contentment a heart at rest.
A soul that is satisfied, a blessed life and to some degree
I would say that that's what I was looking for.
When I started reading the Bible for the first time at the age of
19, I was longing for guidance on How to live my life in a way
that would lead to flourishing and not damage or
disappointment. And I was trying to make sense
of these competing voices in the world, telling me what to pursue
Each of, which seemed to contradict the others.
I was looking for truth, but I was also just looking for a way
to calm the anxiety inside me that feared taking a wrong turn
and wasting my life. So a lot of you know me, you
know this my story but I started when I started college, I wasn't
a Christian. I actually hadn't been raised to
follow any particular religion or ideology.
Balaji. So when I was suddenly sent out
into the world as an adult free to pick any path, I chose it
struck me that they didn't seem to be any way to know what the
right path was, until you actually walked it.
And I found that to be terrifying, but the only
alternative is to try to figure out which voices I could trust.
And I thought, if I could just look more deeply into another
person's life and see what it actually looked like, to follow
the path that they were recommending, maybe I could see
down that path. Far enough to predict where it
was actually leading and make a good decision.
And so, one thing I found compelling about the Bible is
that it's biographical the gospels in particular Center, on
a person who is the Son of God, the Divine being incarnate, the
Savior, the Christ and me to watch him live out.
The ideology that the beliefs, the the faith that was named
after him Christianity. So in the gospel of Matthew,
which is what we're in today, chapter four marks, the
beginning of Jesus ministry, as he begins, proclaiming, the
gospel of the kingdom and healing every Disease and every
Affliction among the people at their core, the people of Israel
listening to Jesus message. One of the same thing that we do
a life of blessing, and they saw in Jesus, something
extraordinary, his words are compelling and their follow up
with action. He doesn't merely preach an
abstract concept of God in heaven.
He brings God and Heaven here to Earth.
He heals the sick, he liberates. Those oppressed by Demons.
He causes paralytics to walk again.
And as the people see this, they find themselves thinking, if
anyone can help us move toward a better life and a better world.
It's got to be him. You've never seen anything like
this. So as we turn to Matthew Chapter
5, Jesus is already surrounded by crowds of people.
And so, he sits down to teach them.
And the first thing Jesus says, is a complete reversal of
everything. His listeners associate with the
good life. He speaks blessing not over
those who are like the religious Elite but over the poor in
spirit, he speaks blessing, not over those living in comfort and
ease. But over those who mourn, and he
speaks blessing Not Over The Bold and The Powerful, but over
the meek So the Beatitudes kind of subvert our expectations by
giving the kingdom of God and all of its richness to the
people that society would least expect and Jesus's teachings
function like a kind of reset button.
We realized that if what he's saying is true, we must not
understand the blessed life at all.
His word should stir up a curiosity about these blessings,
what they mean for our lives and the type of Kingdom that Jesus
is announcing. So Dallas Willard, Christian,
philosopher and author had this insight about the attitudes.
He says that the Beatitudes, served to clarify, Jesus
fundamental message, which is that the free availability of
God's rule in righteousness, to all of humanity, through
Reliance Upon Jesus himself. And the Beatitudes do this,
simply by taking those who from the human point of view are
regarded as most hopeless. Most beyond all possibility of
God's blessing or even interest and exhibiting them as enjoying
God's touch. Abundant provision from the
heavens, the religious system of his day.
Left the multitudes out but Jesus welcomed them all into his
kingdom. Anyone could come as well as any
other and they still can that is the gospel of the Beatitudes.
So as we begin this conversation about the Beatitudes we need to
remember that we're not just talking about rules and virtues
in the pathway to blessing. We were talking about a
revolution in which God the king of creation comes to reclaim his
throne and he cast a vision for Russ about what his kingdom will
look like. And who will be invited to his
table and the question for us will be?
Do we want in? Do we want to see his Kingdom?
Come On Earth as it is in heaven.
So as we ponder that, let me pray for us for a start.
Jesus, we come to, you wanting to learn your ways.
God, we come to, you wanting to understand more about who you
are, wanting to understand more about your kingdom, wanting to
be shaved by you. Lord, I pray that today.
No matter what, we've come in here with whether we're feeling
tired or full of energy, if we're feeling burdened, if we
have questions on our minds, if we are asking ourselves, if we
want to follow you God, regardless of where we are right
now, we just Pray that you would speak to us and that you would
show us more of yourself. Lord God, we pray that your word
become a life to us. We pray that your spirit would
be tangibly present with us. We pray that this would be a
space where we are able to encounter you and be stirred up
to remember why, why it is that we can come together and Worship
You? Lord, that we would see you for
all your goodness and righteousness and Beauty today.
I pray these things in Jesus name, amen.
So the P attitude that we're focused on today is Matthew 5,
6. Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.
So, when I was assigned this verse to teach on, I was nervous
about it because I have so many questions about it, and I still
do so congratulations. You get to join me an unpacking,
these questions and looking to see what God's word might have
to say about them. Even my main sermon points are
questions and I have three of them.
So first what exactly is righteousness?
Second, why are those who hunger and thirst for it?
Blessed and third. What does it mean that we will
be satisfied or filled as some translations say?
So first Big Kahuna. What is righteousness?
Since question is important for readers of the Bible because the
word righteousness appears in the English Bible 277 times.
I'll pause to let that sink in 277 times, which means It,
outranks mercy and Justice in terms of frequency and it almost
outranks Faith, which is mentioned 278 times.
So both the Greek and the Hebrew word that we translate as
righteousness imply being right. In a moral sense like walking on
a straight path. So one who is righteous is
truthful? Ethical, just Equitable.
Holy some authors Define righteousness as the perfect
Holiness of Christ moral Purity or to act in keeping what with
what is right and just So coming up with a nice pithy definition
is one thing, actually imagining what it looks like to live.
This out is completely different because we as Humanity can't
seem to agree on what constitutes truth, justice and
morality. And even if we agree that these
things were worth pursuing, we would all likely set off on
somewhat different paths. So in theory, the church should
have a shared golden standard for what it looks like to live a
righteous life, but we seem to struggle as much.
Is anyone in my lifetime? The church has not always had a
reputation for being righteous unless you add the prefix self
to the front, which changes the definition and not in a good
way, religious people for religious people in particular,
there seems to be a slippery slope leading into
self-righteousness. So this week, I stumbled upon
this article in Psychology today of all places that attempts to
distinguish between righteousness and If
righteousness and I thought was interesting because even though
it's a secular article, the author actually chose to begin
by exploring the perspective of religion on these topics.
So it's fascinating. So the article says, biblically
speaking righteousness is about being in right standing with God
versus self righteousness, which is giving final Authority for
one's decisions. Not to God, but to oneself.
So self-righteousness becomes paradoxically a kind of self
trusting sacrilege the Person isn't serving God's will, but
profaning, God by serving or taking vinyl direction from
themselves? So when I read that I was like
oh that stings a little, the tendency to take direction from
ourselves to give final Authority for decisions to
ourselves. So way to relatable,
self-righteousness sets our very selves up as Rivals to God.
And the trouble for Humanity is that are longing for
righteousness on the one hand and our propensity towards
unrighteousness in self-righteousness.
On the other hand are intermixed inside of us in ways that are
really hard to untangle most times humans often.
Make kind of poor measuring sticks for what righteousness
actually looks like. With one exception, Jesus has
the benefit of being both human and divine free from sin.
So when he speaks on the topic of righteousness, it's time to
listen closely. So Mom, Jesus is mentioned of
righteousness. One, Parable stood out to me
from Luke 18 and now I was, I was biased and choosing this one
because I already love this story so much that I've actually
been excited. Share it with you, it's so good.
So if you recognize it, if you know it just pretend that you
don't for a moment so you can actually hear it a fresh.
But it's about a Pharisee and the tax collector and a Pharisee
is a member of a strict devout Jewish religious sect and a tax
collector is basically the poster child for betraying, your
nation for personal gain. So that's what we're dealing
with here. But the passage says that Jesus
told this, Parable to some who trusted in themselves, Elves
that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.
So goes like, this, two men went up to the temple, to pray, one,
a Pharisee and the other a tax collector, the Pharisee standing
by himself prayed. Thus God, I thank you that.
I'm not like other men, extortioners unjust adulterers
or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week.
I give tithes of all that. I Get.
But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up
his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful
to me a sinner. They tell you this man went down
to his house Justified, rather than the other for everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself
will be exalted So, once again, Jesus is inverting the expected
order of things because the listeners expect the Pharisee to
be elevated and praise to be in the right spiritual posture.
But instead the person who is praised is the tax collector,
the one who is despised by society and assumed to be
unrighteous and I want to point out this one phrase so the tax
collector it says went down to his house Justified.
So do you know what the text actually says the Greek word
translated Justified is de gallo.
O Greek, which is the verb form of the word righteous.
So another way of saying this is that the tax collector was
rendered righteous. How well the reveal is given at
the end of the parable, everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted So the
righteous are not the ones who think they have all arrived
spiritually, the ones who think they've figured out how to play
the game and win brownie points with God, the righteous based on
this. Parable are those who repent.
Is that what you think of when you think of righteousness?
It's not what I think of first. I was very surprised to make
this discovery. I'll say it again.
It's so surprising. Those who are counted as
righteous by God, are those who repent, who humble themselves
before God, who are willing to be set right with God and so
call upon his mercy, God be merciful to me a sinner.
This Revelation actually gave me chills.
When I was reading these things because this is not, this is not
the wisdom of the world and it's not even the wisdom of most
religious ideology, but it is the wisdom of Jesus.
And so we need to know more about the surprising teaching.
So let's turn to the Apostle. Paul, who is an Ardent follower
of Jesus because Paul talks about righteousness in an
unexpected way, Paul has this obsession with a connection
between righteousness and faith. And we see that especially in
the Book of Romans. So here are just a few examples.
Romans chapter 1. For, in the gospel, the
righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith
From First to Last. Just as it is written, the
righteous will live by faith. Romans 3, but now the
righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
For all who believe Romans for what the scriptures say, Abraham
believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Now to the one who works his wages are not counted as a gift,
but as his due and to the one who does not work, but believes
in him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is Is counted
as righteousness. So this is not the end of the
list. But again, and again, Paul
connects righteousness with faith with belief, with the
gospel of grace, and I think this highlights for us kind of
this hidden trap, which is that the tricky thing, is that it is
so easy to let righteousness become about rules alone, but
righteousness is not in the law itself, although good laws
should reflect and steer us towards a righteous living.
But when we talk about true righteousness, We are talking
about a person righteousness is in God himself.
He defines it, he embodies it. Jesus himself is how we know
what righteousness actually is. And for Christians, Jesus is our
righteousness. That's how the Bible talks
about. He is our righteousness and that
is a major point for Paul that he's trying to emphasize for us
as a former Pharisee. If we divorce righteousness from
the person of God, it quickly becomes, shame or legalism.
We might even start out by defining a set of rules that are
inspired by Jesus and modeled after Jesus.
But then once we have those rules, it becomes tempting to
act like the Goal is to live righteously on our own without
Jesus, but we write God out of the picture and we make it about
our own performance, but the law, the guidelines me, which we
live the values that govern our Behavior.
It's good. But laws are only guardrails.
They're not our savior. Jesus is and the righteousness
we receive through faith, belongs to him, becoming
righteous is becoming like him. He is Equitable, just holy and
more. The pure.
He's the only one who unfailingly acts and keeping
with what is right and Faith turns us toward Jesus.
It leads us to submit to Jesus it teaches to love Jesus and the
righteousness that we receive through, faith is transformative
because it brings who Jesus is the one righteous person alive
in our hearts. And so we learn too long for him
and for the goodness that we see in him and true.
Righteousness is born from that longing for God.
God himself and for a world that reflects who he is.
So that brings us to our second major question, which is what is
the significance of that? These words, hungering and
thirsting for righteousness? How is that connected to
blessing? So what I find interesting about
Jesus's word choice, is that hunger and thirst are
instinctive longings. We need food, we need water and
something inside of us aches when we don't get that
sustenance and reminds us to go out and seek it.
So in the Bible hunger is often also used metaphorically.
One commentary says that the hunger.
Means to Crave ardently to seek with eager desire and a thirst
is so painfully. Feel your want of or your lack
of those things, by which the soul is refreshed supported and
strengthened so on a soul level, righteousness is meant to fill
an essential need and it's possible for her inner being to
egg with a desire to be set right ourselves for our world to
be set, right? So when I was in high school,
it's a long time ago before I really began my spiritual
journey. I started reading self-help
articles, which is maybe a weird thing for a 16 year old to do.
But I think I was at a point where I was really starting to
recognize things inside of myself that I did, not like
selfishness, Envy vanity, a critical and prideful Spirit,
but I didn't have any clue what to do about it.
If I had been taught really any strategies, theoretically, it
was more along the lines of To focus on your strengths or
honestly, to compare yourself to people who are more frog than
you. So you can feel better about
yourself. So those were the coping
mechanisms available to me, positive, reframing, and pride,
and they were like, Band-Aids on a flesh wound.
They were wildly and sufficient to change my heart into heal the
Brokenness. I discovered inside of me, maybe
you relate to that, but even if we struggle to identify our own
Brokenness, we usually have no problem seeing it in other
people and This technological age, it has become harder and
harder to ignore the Brokenness in the world around us.
War is rage on. Seemingly fueled by power-hungry
arrogance. People are trafficked as if
they're less than human con artists, he people out of their
money in compromise, their ability to provide for their
families, marriages end in betrayal and contempt, and even
violence. And I'm literally just listing
things that I've seen on the news recently.
But none of it is new war violence, corruption, abuse.
All of it was present during Biblical times, but can you see
why people flocked to Jesus? It is time even the most
religious, the most supposedly Pious in upright, people of the
day cared more about strictly following these rules that
they'd created that about the welfare of people.
So, I'll give you an example. This is from Matthew chapter 12,
Jesus interest, a synagogue, so synagogues, so he's in a place
of worship. Up.
And he sees a man with a withered hand, but the Pharisees
who are there, the religious leaders are totally focused on
just trying to entrap Jesus and to somehow prove that he's less
than holy and so they essentially display, no mercy to
the man who is likely struggling to provide for himself whose
limited Mobility. Probably means that he feels a
sense of shame in his Society. So a man who was in desperate
need is standing right there and the Pharisees want to play mind
games. Oh, are you ailing or injured?
Sorry, it's the Sabbath. We don't work on the Sabbath so
you'll just have to suffer one more day.
But Jesus says, never mind, I can heal you.
And when Jesus heals the man, the Pharisees don't celebrate at
the site of the miracle. It says they went out and
conspired against Jesus how to destroy him.
Does that sound anything like righteousness?
But the Pharisees reputation was that they were righteous people,
they cared about the law. Many people had drifted far from
God's ways and they are religious group is dedicated to
Bringing people back to the way of Holiness of modeling.
What it looks like to be faithful to God.
So how did they get? So off track?
Many of us in this room are religious people, and we want to
live by the words of scripture, and we want to call others, to
do the same. But if our pursuit of
righteousness, is not deeply rooted in our love of God, and
our love of others, the two greatest Commandments.
If our righteousness, is not interconnected with our
relationship with Jesus, we will completely miss the point.
Jesus cares about healing about restored.
Relationships about Justice about forgiveness.
The point is not just to be a law-abiding citizen as if that
were an end in itself. The end goal is the reign of God
flooding the Earth like a cleansing power and making
everything new reshaping, our hearts to reflect God's very
character and drawing Us in to God's very presence to worship
him. For all of eternity.
That is the point. Hungering and thirsting puts us
in a posture of seeking, God of clinging to him of wanting to be
filled by him longing, for who Jesus is and what he brings into
this world. It puts us in the mindset of the
tax collectors and prostitutes, who knew that they were broken,
and wanted to be made right with God.
So when Jesus opened his arms to them, and invited them to his
table, they came running and they were healed.
They were changed. They were redeemed.
Do you see the two halves of the kindness of God in that
receiving the unbelievable? Grace of God, lays a foundation
of Faith, where we know that we need Jesus, but we also just
love him. We are in awe of him.
And if we are stunned and preoccupied and overwhelmed by
the beauty that we see in, Jesus won't we naturally want to live
in Imitation of him, won't we want to live righteously Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall
be satisfied. So final question, what does it
mean that we will be satisfied or filled?
So, the beauty of this beatitude is that we learn that God is
responsive to our hunger and to our thirst.
He wants to fill our desire for righteousness.
And again, hunger and thirst are natural, impulses.
So we're not looking to manufacture an air of longing as
if that would help us to secure a blessing somehow.
But by recognizing that hungering and thirsting for
righteousness, is a state of the soul that Jesus celebrates, we
can lean into it and look for how he wants to use that ache
inside of us to bring about good.
So to end our time today, I have kind of three suggestions if you
will to help us to just focus on seeking satisfaction from God.
So first Let your heart be filled with awe at God's Beauty.
Second repent and receive God's righteousness by faith and
third, let your soul stay desperate for a better world.
So first, let your heart be filled with awe and God's Beauty
meditating on the person of Jesus in the way that he lived
in the purity of his heart, it isn't just an intellectual
exercise or like a practical exercise to figure out when we
do the core of it is to look at Jesus and to find him.
Lovely. To want more of him to find his
presence to be satisfying in Jesus.
We have this beautiful purity of character, which is something
that we do not see much of in this world, and by walking
closely with him seeking to know his heart.
And miring him to the point that we long to imitate him, that
will change us righteousness, is the byproduct of a life lived
truly and fully with God. Psalm 27 verse 4 King.
David says, one thing I have asked of the Lord that I will
Seek after that, I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the
days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to
inquire in his Temple. So, David lists this up as his
ultimate goal gazing upon the beauty of God and seeking his
presence. And his goodness, and similarly
standing, a knob Jesus can become a part of our devotional
lives. Read the gospels, pay attention
to Jesus character. And the way that he seamlessly
integrates mercy and Justice, obedience, Cultural courage,
reconciling, love, and moral Purity.
Let your heart be filled with awe at God's Beauty.
Secondly, repent and receive God's righteousness by faith.
So, earlier, we talked about the connection between repentance
and righteousness and the one who confessed his sin and came
to God for. Healing, was the one who was
rendered righteous by the grace of God.
Repent. Does not have to be a scary
word. The call to repent can be an
invitation to let Jesus renovate our hearts.
Imagine you can like a pagan Temple.
If the ones that you read about in the Old Testament, so it's
filled with like, Choose and murals and iconography
everywhere celebrating these false gods.
This is what the human heart is like without Christ.
Putting our faith in Jesus means letting him renovate that Temple
and remove all evidence of Every Idle.
We've ever worshipped clearing out the Clutter from her past
life and sanding down. Like the patterns of sin that
have been engraved into us until they're no longer visible.
And at the end of it, all the temple will be clean as if it
were brand new. And it will be a place where
Jesus alone is worshipped in, this is what happens through
repentance. We, our hearts are slowly made
new. Now, the one hand, this
renovation project is in Jesus's hands, so we can rest in the
fact that it's going to be finished.
Because Jesus, finishes everything he starts.
On the other hand, it's a lifelong journey for us and so
we can grow weary of repenting again and again and uncovering
more remnants of sin and like every nook and cranny in our
lives. But we have a vision of who
Jesus is and who we can become. If you have a longing to be
cleansed of idolatry and may be drawn near to Jesus.
And to be filled with God, that is the motivation.
We need to lean into that and to be transformed, Jesus is calling
us just to Repent, and to the leave, the good news, hand over
your sins, your past, your Brokenness, or selfishness, your
self-righteousness, Give It All to Jesus and say, God have mercy
on me. A sinner repentance is a simple.
But powerful way to say, God, I want more of you in my life.
I want to clear more space. I want to be filled by your
goodness, Jesus. Lastly.
Let your soul stayed desperate for a better world.
Life is fairly satisfying and even when it is, it usually only
lasts for a moment or a temporary span of time.
So we often end up chasing one high after another trying to
fill ourselves up somehow or we just despair of it all and just
learn to live perpetually cynically dissatisfied.
But the Paradox of scripture is that through our fellowship with
God, through our life of faith, we can experience a type of
satisfaction in God that actually then stirs up more
hunger and more Athirst. So, for example, I can think of
many times when I've been let's say I'd like a worship night or
or a prayer Gathering and God's presence is suddenly.
So Putin to me that it feels as if the cloud of his glory is
filling the air around us and for a moment, it satisfies that
desire to be close to him. But in the Gathering ends and we
wake up as if from a dream, the man, you just want that back.
It could be tempting to try to schedule like paradise and
Retreats and all those things like every night and hopes of
recapturing, that feeling. But what's happening is, we're
getting a taste of what we were made for to dwell in the
presence of God in a world. That is saturated with his
goodness. Always our hearts want Eden back
and God Stokes that hunger so that we will seek him and move
deeper into The life that we have for him or that he has for
us. So you probably heard this quote
popular 1 by c.s. Lewis, but it's really great,
so, it does bear repeating. He says, if we find ourselves
with a desired that nothing in this world, can satisfy the most
probable explanation is that we were made for another world and
I think the Beatitudes suggest that the goal is not to try to
extinguish that hunger or eliminate that desire for more.
We should want more because a better world is coming through
Christ. I think God wants us to Crave
it. The discomfort of that craving
might up to us, to try to scratch that itch ourselves and
look for things in this world that at least temporarily
satisfying, but the kind of satisfaction that actually gives
life and creates growth can only come from God.
So church let yourself long for these things, these things that
God promises his presence. His goodness, his healing, his
Justice, his righteousness. And find your rest in the truth.
That God always comes through on his promises. has second Peter
chapter 3 verse 13 says, In keeping with God's promise, we
are looking forward to a new Heaven and a new Earth where
righteousness dwells. So, let's pray now that God
would Empower us to seek first, his kingdom and his
righteousness until we don't him alone for satisfaction.
That's right.