Word of Salvation – Vol.36 No.20 – May 1991

 

How’s Your Appetite?

 

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde on Matthew 5:6

Reading: Romans 9:30 – 10:13; Amos 5:4-17, 21-24.

 

Introduction

To get the right atmosphere for a sermon like this I should really have preached it a couple of months ago.  The title of this sermon would have been a very relevant question: “How’s Your Appetite?” – and I’m referring to those of you who were coming to the end of the World Vision 40 Hour Famine.  At that stage your appetite was absolutely fantastic.  You could think of nothing else.  In your mind a piece of cake with cream was as big as a mountain covered with snow!  And for your midday meal you had visions of hills of vegetables, mountains of potatoes, with lakes of gravy and all of that followed by an Antarctica of ice-cream.

I exaggerate and yet you get the point.  Your mind was on food.  You could think of little else.  You were waiting for that precious moment when your rumbling stomach would be filled and your ravishing appetite would be satisfied.  At that point in time your great longing was for physical food.

But there are of course other longings that we can have as well.  To hunger and thirst can be like a man who wants a position.  He is restless.  He cannot keep still.  He is working and plodding.  He thinks about it and he dreams about it.  His ambition is the controlling passion of his life.  He hungers and thirsts for that position.

Or it is like love for a person.  There is always a great hunger and thirst in love.  A’ young man is separated from his fiancée; and the foremost desire of his heart is to be with her again.  And the same is true of the girl.  They are not at rest until they are together again.

Well, I hardly need to use more illustrations.  The Psalmist summed it up perfectly when he said in those well-known words:

‘As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for Thee, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.’ (Ps.42:1)

And one aspect of that thirsting for God is a desire for righteousness.  The hungry man cannot do without food.  The ambitious man cannot do without his promotion.  The lover cannot do without his beloved.  The Christian cannot do without God.  To be away from God is a fate worse than death and the one condition for being in God’s presence is righteousness.  Therefore he hungers and thirsts for righteousness, knowing that only then will he be satisfied.  And that hunger and thirst for righteousness means ultimately a desire to be free from sin in all its forms and in its every manifestation.  And therefore we must take righteousness in its broadest Biblical sense, and in the Bible righteousness has at least three aspects:- legal, moral and social.  In the sermon this morning I’d like to take a look at each of these aspects in turn and see what it is, how it works itself out and how it is fulfilled.  And those who hunger and thirst after righteousness do so in the fullest possible way.  They don’t want just part of it they want all of it – legal, moral and social.

So then, first of all, what is legal righteousness, or righteousness in its legal sense?

It is simply this – it is justification or a right relationship with God.  So the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is first of all the man who sees that sin and rebellion have separated him from the face of God, and he longs to get back into that old relationship, the original relationship of righteousness in the presence of God.  Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were righteous in the presence of God.  They dwelt and walked with Him.  That is the relationship such a man desires.  He wants to be right with God again.  The fellowship that was broken he wants to have healed and restored.  He wants to walk with God.

And how can that be done?  How can that legal righteousness be established?  Or, if you like, what is the first step back to Paradise?  How can you be right with God again?  How can the relationship between the perfect Creator and the sinful creature be re-established to be what it was meant to be?

And in answering this question so many people make such a fatal mistake.  In a sense they really want to be right with God, they want that kind of righteousness, but they are fooled by something that isn’t the real thing.  They thought they had found gold, but it was fool’s gold.  They thought they had bought a diamond, but they had been conned into a cheap imitation.  And because they have been side-tracked by something fake and counterfeit they give up their search for the real thing.  It’s like a child whose appetite is spoiled with lollies and sweets and he doesn’t feel like eating when a nutritious dinner is being served.  He’s filled his stomach with the wrong kind of food.

And the same is true when people try to satisfy their spiritual appetites with the wrong kind of righteousness.  By and large this is what the Jews did and this is Paul’s big complaint in Romans 9:

‘Israel, who has pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  Why not?  Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.’ (Rom.10:31,32)

And then he takes up the theme again in the next chapter in verse 3:

‘Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.’

You see, when it came to restoring that broken relationship with God they thought they could repair it from their end.  They replaced legal righteousness by legalistic righteousness.  If they could outwardly keep the law in every detail then surely God would be pleased; surely He would accept them.  And that sort of mentality is still very much alive today.  What kind of answer do our E.E. teams get when they ask that all important question:

‘If God were to say to you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” then what would you say?’

And time and again it’s the same old thing: ‘Oh, I lived a pretty good life’; ‘I’ve tried to keep the commandments’; ‘I’ve done the right thing by my fellowman.’  Over and over and over again it’s a works type answer.  Their hope of heaven is based on a righteousness by works.  And that’s the very thing that Paul is hitting so hard in Romans 9 and 10.  No!  No!  and one thousand times no!  A right relationship with God does not come about through your good works.  That is a human kind of righteousness.  It is a false kind of righteousness and it will never get you to heaven.

So what is the kind of righteousness that we are to hunger and thirst for?  It is not our own but God’s and it came through Christ.  That broken relationship between God and man could only be repaired by God and He did it through Christ.  And that righteousness comes not through good works but only through faith in Christ.  As Paul said in Romans 10:4:

‘Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone.’

Only Christ can satisfy our spiritual appetites, we can never do it ourselves.

Only Christ can put us right with God; we can never do it ourselves.

Only Christ could perfectly keep the law; we can never do it ourselves.

And so when do I have that legal righteousness that we’re talking about?

It is when I put my faith in Christ who kept the law perfectly for me.

It is when I put my faith in Christ who went to the cross to put me right with God.

It is when I put my faith in Christ whom God made to be sin for me so that in Him I might become the righteousness of God.

So when it comes to hungering and thirsting for righteousness, don’t fill yourself on junk food that will kill you in the end.  Listen to God’s invitation through the prophet Isaiah:

‘Come, all you who are thirsty, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat!  Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost.  Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?  Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.’  (Is.55:1,2)

It’s an invitation to eat in the best restaurant in town and it’s all free of charge courtesy of Jesus Christ.  He’s the manager and the cook and the waiter too and He will meet your every need.  Have you come to Him?  Have you accepted His offer?

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.’

So what is legal righteousness?  It is a right relationship with God.

How does it come about?  When I put my faith in Jesus Christ.

And when is my hunger and thirst for it satisfied?  The moment I believe.

And yet at that very moment I begin to hunger and thirst for more righteousness.  That renewed relationship with God will be expressed in my life.  Righteousness in principle becomes righteousness in practice.  Legal righteousness leads to moral righteousness.

And what is moral righteousness?  It is righteousness of character and conduct that pleases God.  And to hunger and thirst for that kind of righteousness is to desire to be free from the power of sin.

But it goes further still.  It means a longing to be free from the very desire to sin, because we find that the man who truly examines himself in the light of Scripture discovers that he is in the bondage of sin.  What is even more horrible is that he likes it and he wants it.  Even after he has seen it is wrong, he still wants it.  But now the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is a man who wants to get rid of that desire for sin, not only outside, but inside as well.  In other words, he wants to be delivered from the pollution of sin.  Sin is something that pollutes the very essence of our being.  The Christian is one who desires to be free from all that.

In a sense that’s putting it negatively.  So let me put it positively like this: To hunger and thirst after this kind of righteousness is the longing to be positively holy.  As one author has put it:

‘The man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is the man who wants to exemplify the Beatitudes in his daily life.  He is a man who wants to show the fruit of the Spirit in his every action and in the whole of his life and activity.  To hunger and thirst after righteousness is to long to be like the New Testament man, the new man in Christ Jesus’.  (Lloyd-Jones, p.79.)

Now let me ask you: Is that your constant longing every day again?  Is that what you really want the most in life?  To be positively holy; to show the fruit of the Spirit; to live out the Beatitudes in your daily behaviour?  Is it that kind of thing that won’t let you rest until you have it and have more of it?  Is that what you want in your life every day as much as you wanted food during the 40 hour famine?  That’s what Jesus is talking about when He says: ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.’  Is he talking about you?

That’s moral righteousness; it is a matter of being positively holy.  It is a matter of being like Christ.  And isn’t that the Christian’s supreme goal in life, to be a truly Christ-like person?

Yes, righteousness is by faith but it will always produce good works.  Legal righteousness will always lead to moral righteousness.  The first is the cause of the second and the second is the proof of the first.

Or if you like:

Legal righteousness is justification which is the work of Christ.  Moral righteousness is sanctification which is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Justification happens in a moment, whereas sanctification takes a life-time.

And yet here again Jesus’ promise holds true:

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.’

Here is the promise that if you really want more holiness in your personal life you will get it.  If you really want to grow as a Christian it will happen.  So if there is no spiritual growth in your life then you should quite frankly ask yourself the question: ‘Am I really hungering and thirsting for righteousness?’

So what’s moral righteousness?  It’s being positively holy.

And how does that come about?  Through the work of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

And when is our desire for it satisfied?  Gradually, over the period of a Christian lifetime.

And this brings us then to the third area which is social righteousness.  The Christian is not satisfied with righteousness for just himself.  He also wants to see it in the world around him.  And sadly this is a dimension that is all too often neglected in much of contemporary Christianity.  But biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair.  It goes beyond the individual and includes society as well.

And so what is social righteousness?

Very simply you could define it with one word – ‘justice’!  It has to do with man’s liberation from oppression.  It has to do with the promotion of civil rights.  It’s concerned with integrity in business dealings and honour in home and family affairs.

And it was concerns like this that put fire in the bones of the prophet Amos, that great preacher of social justice in the O.T.  He’s a hard hitter and he hammers his theme home.  Listen to just a few verses taken from chapter 5:

‘You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground …  I know how many are your offences and how great your sins.  You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.’ (vv.7&12)

And then God says:

‘Away with the noise of your songs!  I will not listen to the music of your harps.  But let justice roll on like a river and righteousness like a never failing stream.’ (vy.23-4)

Amos was a man who hungered and thirsted for justice.  Do you?  Or do you only do it when you are the victim of injustice?

Let’s face it, there are not many Bible-believing Christians who have much of an appetite for this kind of righteousness today.  Somehow we have by and large failed to see the social implications of the Gospel.  But that’s not always been the case.  There have been many times in the history of the church when people have taken the message of Amos and boldly applied it to their own situation.  And perhaps one of the greatest examples was the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.  Under the leadership of a godly statesman like William Willberforce, English Christians rallied to the greatest social challenge of their day.  They undertook a mammoth task and one church historian has briefly summarized the outcome of the struggle:

‘The campaign against slavery was a long and costly struggle for all concerned.  Some of the leaders lost their health and their fortunes in the course of it.  The opposition vilified “The Saints” as advocates of financial suicide for the British Empire.  The attack on an institution which seemed so fundamental to the economic base of England appeared either as treason or insanity.  Nevertheless, in 1807 the bill to abolish the slave trade was passed by a majority of 293 to 16 with an overwhelming acclamation for Wilberforce.  In 1833 slave-owners in the British Empire were commanded to release their slaves in a year’s time and compensated by a gift of 20 million pounds from the English treasury, an act which has been called “one of the three or four totally righteous acts of governments in history”.’ (Lovelace, p.370)

Here were Christians who hungered and thirsted for justice and their appetite in fact was satisfied.  In America it was quite a different story.  Unfortunately American Christians were divided over the issue of slavery and they didn’t rally to abolish it.  And the same author whom I just quoted, himself an American, comments very frankly on what this division among American Christians was to mean:

‘The results have included the necessity of fighting one of the bloodiest wars in history (the Civil War) in order to accomplish what English churchmen did with prayer and argument.’ (p.376).

Brothers and sisters, slavery has been abolished.  In one country it was by a bloody civil war.  In another it was by Christians who hungered and thirsted after justice.  May God give this kind of spiritual appetite to his people again to confront the issues of our day.

Now please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying we have none of it, especially after the excellent work we’re seeing done with refugees and with the elderly and with the unemployed and in the campaign against abortion.  But shouldn’t more of us have more of it, more of an appetite for social righteousness?  Yes, we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells, where there will be a totally just social order.  But we can already begin to get a taste of that now, even if it is only then that we will be fully satisfied.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (legal, moral and social – the whole thing), for they will be filled.’

Conclusion

Just one closing thought: One of the worst perversions of righteousness is self-righteousness (like the Pharisees).  How can you avoid that?  Again let’s remember the context.  Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are:

Poor in spirit – they know that in God’s sight they are miserable sinners.

They mourn – because they know in their hearts they are miserable sinners.

They are meek – because they can even take other people telling them they are miserable sinners.

But now, of course, they don’t want to stay miserable sinners and therefore they hunger and thirst for righteousness.  And when people like that are filled it certainly isn’t with self-righteousness.

AMEN