In Matthew chapter five, verse
five and six, it says, blessed are the meek, for they shall
inherit the earth. And verse six, blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall
be filled. Today's sermon is about hungering
and thirsting after righteousness. But before we get into verse
6, I want to take you to a summary of meekness, I think, that helped
me this last week as I looked at this. Look with me at 1 Peter,
chapter 2. Meekness, as I tried to point
out in our last message on this, is an attitude that God gives
to His people as a result of the first two blessings, which
are poverty of spirit and mourning. Meekness flows out of those two.
And it has to do with our being humbled before God, and I like
the word mastered. There are many people in the
Old Testament and in the New who were who exemplified meekness. Moses, we mentioned him and went
over that. But think about, and we talked
about Abigail, but think of Esther also. Esther was one who was
given this place as queen and in her life she had to do what
Mordecai advised her to do on behalf of the people of Israel.
And you can see meekness in her life as you think about that.
She laid aside her own her own needs and interests for the sake
of God's people because she was mastered by God. And that's the
way it is. Whenever God, when He humbles
us, He says in Psalm 119, before I was afflicted, I went astray.
now have I kept thy word." That's the way. Psalm 107 is all about
this, God afflicting us, bringing us to nothing, crying out to
Him, Him saving us, and then God saying, oh that men would
praise the Lord for His goodness, for His marvelous mercy unto
the children of men. And so we read in 1 Peter chapter
2 verse 19, if you want to pick this up, or actually look at
this, verse 18. It's one thing to be a good servant
to the kind master. It's entirely different to be
a good servant to someone who is not a good master. And this
seems exactly the opposite of our natural thinking. But this
is what God is saying here for a good reason. He says in verse
19, For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward
God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it if when
you are buffeted for your faults you shall take it patiently?
I find it difficult to even take it patiently when I'm buffeted
for my faults. People tell you you've done wrong
and point it out. Immediately, you go into this
defensive posture and even maybe strike out in offense to try
to take attention away from yourselves. That's natural. We don't like
to be told we're wrong when we're wrong. It's even worse when we're
told we're wrong when we're right. But if when you do well and suffer
for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.
Now he gives us the Lord Jesus Christ as our prototype. For even here unto were you called,
because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example
that you should follow his steps, who did no sin, neither was guile
found in his mouth. who when he was reviled, reviled
not again. When he suffered, he threatened
not, but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously."
I think that really to me sums up meekness. Christ committed
himself into the hand of God and trusted himself to his will
and said, Not my will, but thine be done.
Into your hands I commend my spirit." That is meekness. That requires the meekness which
Jesus says, He's meek and lowly. Who His own self bear our sins
in His own body on the tree. Now He didn't just do this in
order to be a martyr. Some people want to be martyrs,
so they do things to put themselves in harm's way, or they want people
to secretly, maybe, at least, think well of them because they
were martyrs. That's not why Christ did this.
He didn't die in order to be sympathized by us or admired
by us for His sacrificial death, although we do admire Him. The
reason he died was because he wanted to save his people from
their sins. He wanted to do the will of his
father, and he was willing to yield himself, body and soul,
for them who were his enemies. That is meekness. Remember 2
Timothy 2.25? Paul tells Timothy, "...in meekness,
instructing those who oppose themselves, if God, peradventure,
would give them repentance unto the acknowledging of the truth."
It takes meekness to instruct those who oppose themselves.
We naturally just want to write them off, cast them out, and
ignore them, leave them to their fate. That's not the heart. Remember what Jesus said to James
and John when the, or I think it was James and John, they wanted
to call down fire on the city because they didn't receive them. Jesus said, you don't know what
spirit you're up. Christ didn't come, he says,
to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And that's meekness. That's why he's called the one
who's meek. So he goes on, "...who his own
self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being
dead to sins, should live unto righteousness by whose stripes
we're healed." He did what he did to save us from our sins,
that we might live to righteousness. It was all because of his stripes.
That's meekness, isn't it? For you were as sheep going astray,
but are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls,
because of what Christ has done." Now, he builds on that, verse
chapter 3, "...likewise you wives, be in subjection to your own
husbands, that if any obey not the word, they also may without
the word be won by the conversation of their wives." He's saying,
don't preach to them, live before them. While they behold your
chaste conversation coupled with fear, whose adorning, whose the
wives adorning, let it not be that outward adorning, fixing
up your hair, putting on apparel, those kinds of things, wearing
of gold. But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which
is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet
spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price. You see
that? My, that's what I want to learn
that. And God teaches us that. He breaks
us down. He shows us we're nothing. He
shows us Christ is everything. He's given us all things. And
then He turns our hearts to plead with men. toward, for God, and
to plead with God for men." That's what Moses did. Remember 2 Corinthians
5, 20. Look at this. This is phenomenal. This is perhaps the most amazing
verse in all of scripture. He says this. This is the eternal
God. He says in verse 20 of 2 Corinthians
5, now, then, we are ambassadors. God has sent us. We are ambassadors
for Christ. As though God did beseech you
by us, we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God.
That's what God says to his enemies. What would you say to your enemies?
I know what I'd say. Just tell them off and get rid
of them. Get them out of my life. But
Christ came to save his people from their sins. So he goes on
in 1 Peter and he shows us husbands. He says, honor your wives. living
with them as heirs together of the grace of God." And he says,
if you take these things patiently, then you give honor to God because
that's what Christ did. He did it for the sake of His
people. We do it for the salvation of our loved ones and for those
we come in contact with. We humble ourselves in the sight
of God, like Moses did. Remember, they left Egypt. The
people are at the foot of the mountain. Moses receives the
law of God. He comes down. They're naked.
They're dancing. They've perverted themselves. They've made a golden
cap. They're worshiping it. And he falls on his face, and
he prays for them to God. And then he pleads with them
on behalf of God. This is meekness. Back to Matthew
chapter 5. I didn't want to divert too much
to that right now because I want to focus our attention on verse
6 where we read in Matthew 5, are they which do hunger and
thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." I suppose
of all of the Beatitudes, the first one, blessed are the poor,
and this one, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness, this one in particular seems to be the one that we should
be the most familiar with. Because there's so much scripture
written about this. First of all, All men are void of righteousness. Remember what it says, and I'll
give you these verses. I hope that you can either familiarize
yourself with the verses so that you have them in your heart,
and you're comforted by them, and you stand upon them. Or that
you can get a recording and you can refer back to them and look
them up later, but if we don't actually turn there. But Romans
3.10 says, there's none righteous. No, not one. I'm sure we've heard
that a thousand times before. But it's always worth repeating.
Every man in himself is void, empty, barren, destitute of righteousness. But not everyone hungers and
thirsts for righteousness. So Jesus says, blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. The first thing
is, is that no man has righteousness. Some men, women, children, are
given the gift of God to hunger for it. To hunger is to have
a sense. It is to have an awareness of
a need. a need that you have for righteousness
which you cannot meet. And this is summarized in Romans
3 and verses 19 and 20, and I'll read those to you so that you
recall what they are. Romans 3, 19, what does the law
say? He says this, the law says this
to us, we know I'm going to get there so I make sure I get it
right. For we know, in verse 19, Now we know that what thing
soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law,
that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become
guilty before God. That's our condition. That's
our state before God. Guilty. Everyone. None righteous. Guilty. And then the next verse
says, not only are we guilty, but we're helpless. Therefore,
by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in
his sight. What are the deeds of the law?
That's what we do. That's our personal obedience
to keep what God has commanded us to do. And God says, by doing
what God has commanded, there shall no flesh be justified in
his sight. What does it mean to be justified?
It means that God assesses your obedience and determines whether
that obedience fulfills righteousness. If it does, if you're righteous,
then He says, justified. There's the decree. There's the
sentence of the judge. Justified. But if he looks at
that obedience, and he finds nothing but disobedience, or
he doesn't find a complete obedience, or if he finds an imperfect obedience,
if he even finds one sin, if you've broken one law, James
said, then you're guilty of all. Then he has to say, Condemned. He has to condemn us. That's
the opposite of being justified. We're either condemned or we're
justified. In ourselves, all men are guilty. In ourselves, we can do nothing
to bring to God an obedience that God can accept. Every man
is in himself condemned, without righteousness, and helpless to
produce what God requires. That's what Romans 3 and verse
19 says. And so to hunger and thirst after
righteousness is first of all to know that in myself, in my
own personal self, I have nothing that I can bring to God that
God can accept. And how often has this been our
experience? that perhaps we grew up in a
false religion even that dictated to us what we needed to do. And
it might have been a mixture of truth and error. Whatever
it was, we tried to fulfill it. Maybe it was a small thing like
going forward in a church. We couldn't do that. Or maybe
we were able to do that part, but the next thing we weren't
able to do. Read your Bible every day. Oh, we missed out on that.
Or pray all the time. Say your prayers. Well, we couldn't
do that. Maybe we tried. Or witness. Or give. Or dedicate your life. Or whatever it is. We keep this
list, this internal list of things that we need to keep and we know
we're falling short. But God's law doesn't look at
outward things. He looks at the heart. It's in
the heart. The law of God is spiritual. By spiritual it means
it deals with us on the inside. The outward things that we do,
the outward things we do are simply revealed to us what we
are internally. And so, to hunger and thirst
after righteousness is to recognize that I have nothing, that I'm
just a sinner, and that I can bring nothing to God to satisfy
God's justice. To hunger and thirst after righteousness
is not for us to strive after an obedience that God will accept. That is not what it means by
hungering and thirsting after righteousness. We just saw in
Romans 3.20, no man by the deeds of the law can be justified before
God. It can't mean that. That's not
what gives us blessedness. There's only one righteousness,
and we know what that is, and that's what we want to talk about.
So first of all, to hunger and thirst after righteousness is
to see our complete lack, and then the next part is to hunger
and thirst after the righteousness which God will accept. And look
at Philippians. I want to take you to several
places in the scripture, so I hope that you benefit from this. Philippians
chapter 3. Paul had this experience. Every
believer does, to some extent. What we learn when God teaches
us, the first thing He teaches us is that we have no righteousness
in ourselves. And that seems like He would
tell us, you're a sinner, you're a sinner, you're a sinner. And
that does it. But we have a mistaken notion that even though we're
sinners, that we can still fix it. We got ourselves into the
pit one way, we must get out the same way. We fell down, we
got to pick ourselves up. That's not the way salvation
works. And so, in Philippians 3, Paul says this. He had all these righteousnesses
that he took stock in. He thought... That being circumcised,
being a Jew, keeping the law as a Pharisee, being zealous
against those who opposed the law of God in all these things
was righteousness. And that before the law he was
blameless. He thought that. But he was wrong. And he realized
that when God saved him. And he says in verse 7, But what
things were gain to me, things I thought were credits that God
could look at and add up and come with a sum that would give
me something that he could put on the scales and say, now he's
acceptable. Or now it outweighs the bad. Sure he has some deficiencies,
but his good outweighs the bad. That's not... That's not the
way it works, he says. The things that were gained to
me... My Bible reading, my prayers,
my repentings. You put just whatever you want
in there. Those things I counted loss for Christ. Everything I
counted to be of value, now I discount it as the worst kind of rubbish. In verse 9, and to be found in
him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. That's what Paul is saying here.
To be found in him, that was his pursuit, that was his desire,
that's what he thirsted and hungered for, was to have this righteousness
before God. And so when we read this in Matthew
5, 6, blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,
first we see it's a gift of God to believers. And every believer
has this, to know in themselves that they have no righteousness.
But not left there, to know that the only righteousness God accepts
is the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you
to be convinced of this, from God's Word, that the obedience
of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only righteousness God can and
will accept before men. We just read there in Philippians
3 that Paul wanted to be found in Him, in Christ, not having
his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which
is through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteousness
which is of God by faith. So let's consider now that the
obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God. And we want to see this from
Scripture. I want you to see this. First of all, look at a
couple of verses with me. Look at Philippians chapter 2.
And if I refer to these verses every other week and wear you
out with them, well, maybe that's okay. I'm greatly comforted by
them because this is what we hunger for. Philippians chapter
two, verse five. And here in the very first verse,
we see the meekness we've been talking about. Let this mind
be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. What mind? Who being in the form of God,
He was God Himself, the Son of God. He thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. For Him it wasn't robbery to
be equal with God. He was God. But made Himself
of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and
was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as
a man, He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly
exalted him. Now I just want to stop there.
What was it that Christ did? He humbled himself as God, he
laid aside all that was his as God, made himself of no reputation,
became a servant, took upon the form of a man, and then in that
role as servant and with that nature as man, he became obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross. That's the obedience.
Now look over at Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. Remember, I'm trying to show
that from Scripture that the obedience of Christ is our righteousness. For Romans 8 verse 1, There is
therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death. Now, focus on these next two
verses. "...for what the law could not do, in that it was
weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh." God condemned
sin in the flesh. Whose flesh? The flesh of our
Lord Jesus Christ. He came in the likeness of sinful
flesh. God condemned Him Because he
had the sins of his people. That was what God did. He condemned
sin in the flesh. In order that, verse 4, "...the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit." What is the fulfilling
of the righteousness of the law? that God condemned sin in Christ's
flesh. That's what it was. He humbled
himself. He was obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
5. Again, we were there a moment ago. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse
21. We'll read verse 19 through 21.
He says, Verse 19, "...to wit that God
was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." Not every
individual in the world, but those to whom He didn't impute
their sins. He says, "...not imputing their sins unto them,
and hath committed to us the word of reconciliation." Now
then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech
you by us. We pray you, in Christ's stead,
be ye reconciled to God. On what basis? Be reconciled
to God on what basis? This basis. For He hath made
Him, Christ, to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. What constitutes
our righteousness? Christ was made sin for us in
order that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
His obedience unto death. Philippians 2 verse 8. His fulfilling
the law, all righteousness, Romans chapter 8 verse 3 and 4. And
His being made sin for us was the obedience God required in
order that His law might be fulfilled for His people, their sins be
removed. This is the righteousness of
God. And that's why it says in Romans
chapter 3, If you want to turn back to Romans chapter 3, right
after verse 20, where it says, "...therefore by the deeds of
the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin." The very next verse, verse
21 says, "...but now the righteousness of God." He contrasts what men
are unable to do, which is to produce righteousness by keeping
the law, with what God has done, what He provided and has done
in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, "...but now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets, even the righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ
unto all and upon all them that believe." When it says, by faith
of Jesus Christ, it's saying that God gives us to understand
and be persuaded that what God has done in Christ is all of
our righteousness. Faith of Jesus Christ means the
object of our faith. Everything we trust in is what
God has done in Christ. What Christ did is all my righteousness. That's what faith of Jesus Christ
means. He's the object of our faith. You see, we're poor in
spirit, we have nothing to pay. Our sin is a debt we cannot pay. Not only do we have nothing to
pay, but we're poor in righteousness. We have nothing to bring, nothing
to satisfy God for our sins, nothing to fulfill His law for
righteousness. And in this state, we're impoverished.
We're totally unable to do anything. We're helpless to pay. We have
nothing to pay with. We're helpless to obey. Our nature
keeps us from obedience. We're dead in sins. Christ has
come and fulfilled the law both for satisfaction to God's justice
and to fulfill all righteousness. And therefore, His obedience
is our righteousness. Now, that's what I first wanted
to establish, is that the Lord Jesus Christ, by His obedience
to His Father, unto death, even the death of the cross, taking
their sins on Himself, suffering under the wrath of God, all the
way to death, and putting those sins away, is the obedience God
accepts as righteousness for His people. That is perfect obedience. Think about it. All of the law
is fulfilled in what? Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. Did the Lord Jesus Christ in
His death do that? Who could deny it? He laid down
his life for those who were his enemies and gave himself up,
yielded himself body and soul under the wrath of God against
himself. He took their sins on himself
and bore them in his own body. And he trusted his father that
he would deliver him according to his righteousness. And he
did. And he did this for his people. Look at Romans chapter
four and verse 24 and 25. Verse 23 actually too. Now it
was not written for Abraham's sake alone. That's the his in
that verse. Now it was not written for Abraham's sake alone that
it was imputed to him. This righteousness. But for us
also to whom it shall be imputed if we believe on him that raised
up Jesus our Lord from the dead who was delivered for our offenses
In other words, God delivered him up to justice, to judgment,
to the curse, and to death because of our offenses, put on him,
made his, and was raised again for our justification. Who required
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ? God himself. It pleased God to
bruise him. Now has made his soul an offering
for sin. God required his death. Now,
who raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead? God Himself. If God required His death as
payment for sin, and raised Him from the dead, what does that
mean, His death accomplished? The full satisfaction to God's
justice. The full putting away of sin,
and the full establishing of our righteousness. Daniel 9,
in verse 24, it says that when He comes, one of the things that
Messiah would do, would be to establish an everlasting righteousness. Look at Galatians chapter three. Galatians chapter three. I'll
read this to you. Galatians chapter three says
this about righteousness. What was the purpose, what did
the law promise to those who kept all of the law all of the
time without fail? The man which doeth those things
shall what? Shall live by them. If we keep
the law perfectly, continuously, without fail, at one point, God
says, that man shall live before Him. But look at Galatians chapter
3 and verse 21. It says, is the law then against
the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had
been a law given, which could have given life, verily, righteousness
should have been by the law. If God could have given life
by our obedience to the law, then God would have given, if
there was a law that God could have given, that we could have
obeyed, that would have produced, would have established righteousness
for us, and then God would have, that would have issued into life,
then God would have given us that law, and God would have
required us to keep that law for life. But the law can't be
kept by us because we're sinners. We're already dead under sins.
God said, in the day you eat thereof, you're going to die.
And we can't be raised from the dead by our own spiritual deadness. And so, because we're dead in
sins, we can't keep the law, and there's no law that we could
keep that could produce life. It says in Romans 7.10, for the
law which was ordained to life. The law had a purpose. The end
purpose of the law was to reward life to everyone who continuously
and perfectly kept it. But Galatians 3.21 says, but
if there had been a law which could have given life, then righteousness
should have been by the law. If somehow, by our obedience,
we could have kept the law and been rewarded with life, then
God would have said, let righteousness come that way. But it couldn't
come that way. It couldn't. So he says the scripture has
concluded all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus
Christ might be given to them that believe. So this righteousness
that God requires of us is only met by the obedience unto death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that obedience unto death
is not only establishing for us righteousness, but an everlasting
righteousness. An everlasting righteousness.
And not only an everlasting righteousness, but because it's an everlasting
righteousness, that completely and perfectly fulfilled the law,
and it's finished, therefore we're rewarded eternal life because
of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. Look at Romans chapter
10. Look at Romans chapter 10. He
says this in verse... We talked about meekness. Let's
look at the antithesis of meekness. The opposite of meekness. He
says in Romans chapter 10. Brethren, my heart's desire and
prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. That's Paul's
desire. That's meekness. For I bear them
record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to
knowledge." In other words, they have no spiritual understanding.
They're ignorant, which we all are by nature. For they, being
ignorant of God's righteousness, which we just established is
the obedience unto death of the Lord Jesus Christ, And then,
therefore, going about to establish their own righteousness, which
is an utter impossibility, have not submitted themselves unto
the righteousness of God. They're ignorant of it, and they
take stock in, they trust in their own righteousness, their
own ability to produce a righteousness. He says, therefore they haven't
submitted themselves. That's what the proud do. The
proud man doesn't need a righteousness. The proud man has conceit and
thinks of himself as being acceptable to God in some way. God's going
to look upon him. He's going to have mercy. He's
just going to have mercy. What do you mean mercy? He's going
to overlook my sin. No, he's not. God will in no
wise clear the guilty. But then he goes on in verse
4, That is the promise of God. That's the final statement. That's
the assessment of God. He says right here in His Word,
the perfection that God requires of any man
is only found in the Lord Jesus Christ. All the purpose, all
the requirements, and all the promises that the law made to
the man who perfectly kept it are found and fulfilled in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He's the end of the law. The
end in terms of its purpose. The end of it in terms of its
fulfillment. The end in terms of what it could
give to men if they had perfectly obeyed it. Life. Eternal life.
But they couldn't do that. So Christ came, as it says in
Romans chapter 8, What the law could not do, and that it was
weak through our flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh, condemned sin in His flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us who believe, who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit." That's what it means
to walk not after the flesh. To walk after the flesh is to
trust in the flesh. To walk after the Spirit is to
receive the things God has said to us by His Spirit concerning
Christ and to abandon all righteousness of our own and to cling to him
only." That's what it means. What does it say in Romans 4
that Abraham found according to his flesh that righteousness
was not coming by his flesh. That's what he found. God taught
through the physical inability of him and his wife Sarah to
have no children, the barrenness of their flesh, that righteousness
doesn't come by our flesh. And so he uses his life, all
of Abraham's living, to show that even in his old age, when
it was impossible for him, out of his death, God brought life. So out of the death of Christ,
when we were barren and empty of righteousness, God fulfilled
it in Christ and justified us on the basis of His righteousness.
That's what the flesh, that's what Abraham learned concerning
the flesh, and that's what every believer learns concerning the
flesh. We're barren. We're unrighteous. We need a
righteousness. We long for a righteousness.
Oh, that I might be found in Him not having my own righteousness. Now, So, we see here in many,
many scriptures that there's no possibility for us to bring
to God a righteousness. We see also that God has provided
a righteousness. 1 Corinthians 1.30 says this,
"...of Him," of God, "...are you in Christ Jesus, who of God,"
God has made Christ this, "...wisdom, Righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. Are those the blessings we need?
Are those the things which we do not have, we cannot produce,
but we beg for and we confess as beggars? All of my needs were
found in my Lord and my Master. He laid his life down for me
and gave them wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
God did that. And he says in Romans 5.17, this
righteousness is a gift. It's a gift of God. It's given
to us. That's what the Spirit of God
teaches us. Now, to hunger and thirst is a physical sensation,
isn't it? When you get hungry, my stomach
begins to hurt. It's like, man, I'm really hungry.
Thirsty? I really need a drink of water. Those are physical
things. But there's a spiritual correspondence
to hungering and thirsting. a spiritual correspondence to
hungering and thirsting. Look at Isaiah chapter 55. This
is what it means. This is what this has to do with.
It's an evidence of our need, a spiritual need, and that evidence
has to be filled In Isaiah 55, I know as soon as I say Isaiah
55, maybe I wear these places out in your Bible because they're
worn out in mine, but it's what I need these things all the time. Ho, verse 1, ho everyone that
thirsteth. Attention, attention, listen
to me. You everyone that thirsteth,
come ye to the waters. And he that hath no money, come
ye, buy and eat. Yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price. Buy without price, with no money. If you have something, you can't
purchase it. You have to be stripped utterly
naked in order to come in this way. Barren, empty. When Jesus preached the Sermon
on the Mount, the climate, the spiritual climate, the religious
climate of those days were accumulate all the spiritual wealth that
you can. What men consider spiritual goodness,
get some of it. Get all of it you can. And then
stand up in the eyes of others and show and despise others and
show everyone what you have. That was the That's what you
get when you read through the Gospels. The Pharisees were obviously
arrogant and conceited. And nowadays we use the term
Pharisee. It's probably in the dictionary. Someone who's self-conceited
and overly pompous about their own righteousness or something
like that. I don't even know what the word
meant. But we've used it. Even unbelievers know what Phariseeism
is or being a Pharisee is. But that was the climate. And
it's the climate today. It's the climate in our hearts
naturally. But when Jesus comes to them and he says, blessed
are the poor in spirit, you can bet that the Pharisees were like,
this guy has completely lost his rocker. He's off his rocker. He's a nut. Poor in spirit have
the kingdom of heaven? You mean you have to have nothing?
And having nothing, you have everything? Yeah, exactly. Only
beggars get this. Only the small can get through
that little eye of the needle. Not the rich man. Only the impoverished
can buy here. He says, everyone that thirsts,
everyone that has no money, you come, you buy, you eat. And what does it mean? Well,
it's like when we take the Lord's table, when we eat the bread
and drink the wine, what are we saying? Our life, our living,
all that we are is what we representatively take. It's the death and the
dying and the doing of the Lord Jesus Christ. So being hungry
is an indication of a spiritual need. And that need is only met
by eating. But look what it says in Isaiah
55, eating is spiritually. Wherefore do you spend money
for that which is not bread? That shows our self-deception.
We go to work every day. We labor in the hot sun. And
we labor for that which satisfyeth not. That's what trying to keep
the law is. Doing and thinking and trying
to make myself acceptable for God. Guess what? At the end of
the day, you're going to wear yourself out. You're going to
wear yourself to a frazzle. You're going to die in the grave
a worn-out sinner with nothing before God. When you try to make
yourself acceptable to God, you're going to be laboring for that
which satisfieth not. But what does he say? Hearken. In other words, listen diligently
unto me and do what? Eat that which is good and let
your soul delight itself in fatness. For our physical life, we put
things in our mouth, and we chew them up and drink them down,
and that gives us life. For our soul, we open our ear
and pour in the gospel, and God feeds us in our soul. That's
what he's saying here. Hearken, diligently. When I was
teaching Sunday school years ago, and I would draw little
pictures for the kids. I drew a little round thing,
that's the head. Put a little ear on it. That's what he's hearing
with. And then put the word here pointing
into his ear. That's where we eat from. Not
through our mouth, it's through our ear. See? To try to help
the children understand pictorially, what God is saying is spiritually,
God must speak from his word and give us faith in Christ that
we might abandon all that we are, see and be persuaded that
all that Christ is and all that He has done is everything, everything
to God. God is well pleased with His
Son. God says, hear Him and hear Him
only and come to God by Him. And Paul says it, oh that I might
be found in Him not having my own righteousness. And so he
goes on here, he says, incline your ear, come unto me, hear,
and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant
with you, even the sure mercies of David. That's what he's talking
about. And so this thirsting, this hungering
and thirsting is a soul need met by hearing the gospel and
believing it. In John 6, 35, Jesus says, I
am the bread of life. I am. Whoever comes to me and
eats and believes on me, he shall live. Let me read it. I'm probably
completely mangling it, but I'll read it to you. John 6, 35. The
point of what I'm going to read here is that our coming to Christ,
our believing on Christ, is our eating. He says, And Jesus said
to them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Do
you see that? Believing, coming, that's the way we eat. In verse
51 of the same chapter he says this, I am the living bread which
came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread,
he shall live forever. And the bread that I will give
is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. Men
say, well when we eat the elements of the Lord's table, that's actually
physically eating Christ. That's not what eating is about
anyway. It's not about physically eating. It's about believing.
You can eat it all day and go to hell and benefit from it in
no way. But if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the elements
aren't needed. It's just to give us a physical,
tangible representation of what we do in our souls. What God
has given us by His Spirit in our souls. Now, I want you to
go with me to the Old Testament and see something more about
this eating. Look at Look at Exodus chapter 17, because this
reveals to us something about thirsting and hungering, which
we may not realize, but this is very important. Look at this,
Exodus 17, and it's a count that you're probably familiar with,
but look at the first seven verses. all the congregation of the children
of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of sin after their
journeys according to the commandment of the Lord and pitched in Rephidim
and there was no water for the people to drink in the wilderness
and no water wherefore the people did chide with Moses and said
give us water that we may drink and Moses said to them Why chide
ye with me? Wherefore do you tempt the Lord?
And the people thirsted there for water. And the people murmured
against Moses and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought
us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our cattle
with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall
I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone
me. And the Lord said to Moses, Go
on before the people, and take with thee the elders of Israel,
and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take it in thine hand,
and go. Behold, I will stand before thee
there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock. And there shall come water out
of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight
of the elders of Israel. And he called the name of the
place Massa and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children
of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord
among us or not? What is this? The people are
thirsty. There's no water. They're dying
of thirst. They complain. Moses goes to
God. What should I do? God says, this
is the way you're going to satisfy the thirst of this people in
the wilderness. Take your rod, the rod of God, and I want you
to hit the rock, and when you do, water is going to come out
of the rock, and the people will be given water to drink, and
their thirst will be taken care of. Now, we know that this rock,
according to 1 Corinthians, is Christ. That rock which followed
them was Christ, it says there. I believe it's in chapter 10.
So, what is happening here is Moses, like the law of God, hits
the rock, hitting the Lord Jesus Christ, as it were, bringing
Christ under the punishment the curse that the law demanded and
what is the result of that the Lord Jesus Christ is smitten
and him having been smitten out of him flows water and that water
satiates the thirst of the children of Israel look at look at this
in Psalm 78 In verse 15 it says, He claved the rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink as out of the great depths. And He brought
streams also out of the rock and caused waters to run down
like rivers. You see, God gave the water to
the people out of the rock to teach us that our hungering and
our thirsting for righteousness can only be filled one way. Christ
himself had to be made to thirst under the wrath of God. He had
to hunger in himself for the presence of God. He cries out,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? We just read this
in Psalm 42, but look at it with me in Psalm 69. In 69, he says
this, In verse 19 of Psalm 69, Thou
hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor. Mine
adversaries are all before Thee. Reproach hath broken my heart. Verse 20, And I am full of heaviness,
and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and
for comforters, but I found none. You see here, Christ mourning.
He's poor and He's mourning. And now look, verse 21, They
gave me also gall for my meat, And in my thirst they gave me
vinegar to drink." In order for us to be able to be filled in
our hunger and thirst for righteousness, someone else had to be emptied. In order for the water to come
out of Christ, the water of life, His righteousness had to be established
on the ground of His suffering and His obedience unto death.
What we've seen is that the righteousness of God is the obedience of Christ
unto death, even the death of the cross. But that righteousness
of Christ, His obedience unto death, was the way in which we
are satiated, our thirst and hunger are met. He was crushed
that we might be given bread to eat to live. His blood was
poured out that we might be given drink in order that we might
have life in His blood. Come to God by Him and our sins
be taken away. What we need is only met in Christ
and our hunger and thirst was met because He hungered in His
soul and thirsted. That's what it means in 2 Corinthians
5, 21. God has made Him to be sin for
us. Who knew no sin that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. So blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, they shall be
filled." Do you know what it means to be filled? It means
to be completely satisfied, to be completely satiated, to have
no lack left. And when God, by His Spirit,
where does hearing come from? The Word of God. And how does
God give that to us, that hearing? He speaks His Word, He gives
us faith in Christ, and that all is the gift of God. It comes
to us when we believe. In Romans 15, 13, He says, Peace
and joy in believing, that you might have peace and joy in believing.
This faith is a gift of God, given to us by His Spirit, by
which we partake of Christ. And that partaking of Christ
is what is given to us when we hear of what Christ has done
for us and realize that all of our satisfaction is in Him. And
what the operation of God is on our soul is that He causes
us to realize, I have no righteousness before God. I can produce nothing. Everything God has ever required
of me, I've not been able to produce, not even a little bit.
And I can't pay one thing of my sin. Micah says, shall the
fruit of my body pay for the sin of my soul? It can't happen.
God can't accept it. The only way that I can be satisfied
is if God provides a righteousness, if it's a righteousness of God's
own making, and God's own accepting, and God's own doing. It has to
be complete. It has to be perfect. Look at
Isaiah 45. He says in Isaiah 45 verse 24,
Surely shall one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and
strength. Even to him shall men come, and
all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed. In verse
25, in the Lord shall all the seed of Israel be justified and
shall glory. You see, what God does for us
when he gives us the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, when
we know we have none of our own and we see him and see that his
obedience is our righteousness before God, it satisfies us. It satisfies us so much that
in our conscience, We are at peace with God because we know
that God has made peace in the death of His Son. That faith
that God gives us by which we eat and drink, it teaches us
that God has made peace through the righteousness of His Son,
and He's given us that peace in our soul. And so we feed on
Him, and we feel, we perceive that God is pleased with us in
Christ, and that satisfies us. Not only do we're satisfied,
but we're satisfied that when we stand before God in judgment,
The answer Christ has given will be a complete answer, a perfect
answer. And not only that, but look at
this in Galatians, this is the last verse I'll take you to,
I don't want to wear you out, but look at Galatians chapter
five. This is a beautiful, beautiful
verse. He says, in verse, we'll read
verses three through, chapter five, verses three through five.
Paul says, I testify again to every man that is circumcised
that he is a debtor to do the whole law. If you, in other words,
if you try to add anything to the righteousness of Christ,
you are indebted to do everything yourself. Verse 4, Christ is
become of no effect to you. whosoever of you are justified
a little or a lot by what you do by the law you are fallen
from grace now listen to this beautiful verse for we through
the spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith what
God is saying here is that we We cannot perceive righteousness. We don't know about righteousness
and we have no righteousness until God, by His Spirit, reveals
to us that all of our righteousness is in Christ. That's what the
Spirit does. We, through the Spirit, wait
for the hope of righteousness. Righteousness is the reason we
have a hope. Our hope is a confident expectation
of the future that we will be in the presence of God, perfect,
without blame, without fault, accepted, without anything that
God can find a fault in at all. God himself can find no lack
in this righteousness. That's our hope. And this hope
comes to us because of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So
we, through the Spirit, wait for the hope, the security, the
thing that Christ's righteousness has secured to us. We wait for
that. We hope for that. We long for
that. And we do it by faith. Faith brings to us now, in our
present possession, what Christ has done for us. And we wait
for the fulfillment of what Christ has secured to us by His righteousness. That is satisfying to our souls.
Nothing can satisfy a sinner. until God gives him faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ to see that even though he's bankrupt
and has nothing, everything he needs, God has anticipated, provided,
and taught him to trust in, in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when
he comes to God, he confesses this openly, what he is, and
lays open his heart and says, all that I have is found in my
Savior. That's the way we live. That
is walking by the Spirit. And those who walk in the Spirit
evidence themselves that the righteousness of Christ is theirs.
They're filled with righteousness. And that is a blessing nothing
can top. Nothing can top. Let's pray.
Father, thank you that all you demand of us and require of us
is met in our Savior. What a glorious, glorious truth
and prospect this is that we have that we can hope for a future
fulfillment, a full Giving of all that you've promised in the
Lord Jesus Christ, you made him to be sin for us. And he, in
obedience to you, suffered and died for those who were themselves
his enemies in order that he might save them and bring them
to God. The just for the unjust suffering
for us to bring us to God. What a Savior. What a complete
and full satisfaction he has made for sins. And Lord, He is
our hope and trust. And we are completely satisfied
to be and stand before you with nothing. but the Lord Jesus Christ
as our answer. We want no other answer. We trust
no other obedience. We come with no other sacrifice.
We look to no one else but to him. And we thank you, Lord,
for this grace. Give us in our hearts to be filled
and satisfied with the Lord Jesus Christ. And cause us with Paul
to say, oh, that I might be found in him. not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the law, but His. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.