Hunger and Mercy

Read Matthew 5:6-9

One of the keys to the spreading of the gospel is to have believers who make a difference in life—and who live differently. There must be some moral distinctiveness if we are to impact the world around us. Any church with an extraordinary constituency will make a difference.                                                                                              

Jesus’ sermon calls for Christ’s followers to live different lives. He calls us to a different set of aspirations, goals, and values.

These Beatitudes often turn things on their head – they’re paradoxical. What we might expect is often not the result we see. For example, no one expects such a great lesson to be drawn from a tiny mustard seed, but with Jesus and his arriving Kingdom, some norms turned upside down.

Everyone wants to be happy. Jesus understood that and began his sermon where he found every human being: longing for happiness. The longing for happiness is not wrong. God made us for that eternal happiness and for that satisfaction and for that fulfillment of life.  He instilled a longing for happiness within us. The evidence for this can be found in every single human life, in every epoch of human history, and everywhere you look.

This great reversal is the point of the Beatitudes. By the middle of this sermon, Jesus articulates one of his major themes, saying, “Do not be like them.” (Mt. 6:8) The distinctiveness of Christian character and thought is a primary point of this sermon, as well as of the first gospel. Christ’s disciples are to be noticeably different. True happiness in Christ often involves a great reversal from the norms or expectations of present kingdoms.  We have seen this before in Jesus’ sermon. 

We saw it in the blessedness Jesus bestows on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. “Up to this point Jesus’ description of the Blessed-life has been mainly negative. His disciples are aware of what their souls lack: they understand their poverty of spirit, they mourn their sin, and they are meek or humbled by their spiritual condition. This positive attribution of hunger and thirst flows from the negative: knowing what they lack, they long to be different. By using the metaphor of food Jesus likens one’s desire for righteousness not to a passing interest or occasional concern.”[1] The true believer yearns, thirst, pants, and hungers for the things of God.

This “hunger and thirst” is not only a desire for the God who is righteous, but a desire for personal righteousness. This is sadly missing in recent times. Don’t we frequently ask, where is the desire for holiness? Where is the “passion” for personal purity and godliness?

In my thirties, Ann and I went on a diet. I had never dieted before that time. Growing up as an athlete, I had always burnt off excess calories. But after Seminary, I went to Sedentary. Adulthood revealed my lack of moderation in pounds. So we dieted, and began to learn some things about ourselves. After three days, all Ann and I could discuss was hot fudge sundaes and gooey baked potatoes. We were hungry, craving, fixated, un-satiable appetite, infatuated with food. This is the kind of hunger we need for God’s Righteousness. Jesus wants hungry disciples, not those who are always satisfied. Further, we are to hunger and thirst after his righteousness; that is the path to blessing.

God’s righteousness is his correctness that matches his will. We are not called to hunger and thirst after fame, success, or pleasure. Rather, it is the attribute of God—righteousness—that we are to love, crave. A true Christian has such a starvation and unquenchable thirst for God’s Righteousness. Congratulations to you if you “desire above all things to be entirely conformed to the mind of God . . . [and] long not so much to be rich, wealthy or learned, as to be holy.”[2] How many of us really hunger and thirst to be in line with what God says is right? Do you hunger for God, or can you go days, weeks without thinking about him?

As J. B. Shearer noted: “The Pharisee knows nothing of this hungering and thirsting after righteousness, because he is righteous in his own eyes, self-righteous. But the man who has a sense of sin, and has tasted the comfort of pardoned sin, desires above all things to live aright.”[3]

Do you seek God’s righteousness? It is different from many other things.

Spend just a few moments with me probing the difference between self-righteousness and hungering for God’s righteousness. Later, Jesus clarified: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. It is God’s righteousness that we are to seek, not our own, nor even that which a particular society expects of us. Spurgeon said, “I do not know of anything against which God’s fury burns more than against [self-righteousness] because this touches him in a very tender point—it insults the glory and honor of his Son.”[4] Are you aware of that: whenever you are self-righteous, you are invading God’s own territory; you encroach on his turf. That is one of the reasons why Jesus so strongly rebuked the Pharisees by this verse. Jesus wants his disciples to crave more and more of God’s righteousness, not to be pushing away from the table, full.

“Self-righteousness, noted Spurgeon, “is a huge temptation. We flatter ourselves, we think about how many meetings we attend, how much we have sacrificed, how really good we are. . . Our self righteousness is that hideous boa constrictor which seems to coil itself round and round our spirit, and to crush out of us all the life . . . It is easier to save us from sin itself than from our self-righteousness.”[5] He continues: “Ever since man became a sinner, he has [been tempted] with self-righteousness. When he had a righteousness of his own he never gloried in it, but ever since he lost it, he has pretended to be the possessor of it. Martin Luther said he scarcely ever preached a sermon without inveighing against the righteousness of man. Yet he noted, ‘I find that I still cannot preach it down.’ Self righteousness will spring up again and again.”

Self-righteousness will get no one to heaven. In contrast, God wants us to hunger and pant after his righteousness. And God wants us to have more than a mere passing hunger.

When we are hungry—really hungry—we will do some things to get to food right away. When my son Andrew was little, he didn’t eat a lot of dinner in the evenings. But, boy, did he want a big breakfast when he woke up. He could eat more cereal than any little guy I knew. When he’d straggle into the kitchen, he’d still be rubbing his eyes, hair in all directions, but he would knock over anything in between him and the Corn Flakes. He was hungry. His behavior showed it; and he did some things differently because of it. Hunger drives us.

Are you that way about God’s righteousness? Or only mildly hungry? Or not at all. Again, Spurgeon put it succinctly: “Your righteousness will damn you if you trust in it as surely as will your sins, for it is a false, proud lie.”

Terry Johnson perceptively applies: “Think about famous superstars in our world. Do the entertainers and athletes appear content, fulfilled, or satisfied? Or do they find themselves at the top, having it all, yet empty and unfulfilled, looking elsewhere for other things? Everywhere we see the latter and the reason we do is because of who we are as human beings, and for what we are made. We are made to know God, and only in knowing him can we ever find satisfaction. We have what Pascal called a ‘God-shaped void,’ which no created thing can fill, try as we might. Only God can fill it and, consequently, we only truly become who we were created to be, and only truly find peace and joy, fulfillment and satisfaction, when we find God. And God is to be found not through half-measures, but as we “hunger and thirst” for him in Christ Jesus.”[6]

PRESCRIPTION. God always fills this hunger and thirst. This Beatitude promises that his prescription for our ailment or malnutrition is to fill us. Note: not with junk food—not partially enough—but rather to fill . . . to give us as much as our cups can hold. God will certainly fill our hunger and thirst for righteousness such that we’re never wanting in that category. That is the role of the Father for his children. The children of God cannot get along without this righteousness. It is our food and nourishment. This is a norm of the Kingdom. Christians can only be satisfied or filled by God. The Lord gives his famished saints a filling of servings of his righteousness. How fortunate, to be congratulated. And we’ll keep wanting more and being filled more . . . and wanting more and more of God’s righteousness.

Moving to verse 7, the next installment of happiness is found in being merciful. Christ says we’ll be blessed or to be envied because we’re merciful. Remember this describes true Christ-like character. This description is a birthmark of a true subject of God’s Kingdom. Mercy should be distinguished from grace.

• Mercy deals with what we see of pain and distress; it extends relief, cures, heals and helps whereas
• Grace deals with what we see of sin and guilt; it extends pardon; cleanses and reinstates.

Thus mercy is compassion for people in need. Mercy is a loving response given to one who is helpless and in need. It is a holy compassion for a person that leads the believer to seek to meet his/her need. “It is an aversion to everything harsh, cruel, oppressive, or injurious. . . a propensity to pity.”[7] Blessed by God are the merciful—those who show kindness and sympathy to the suffering. Do we fall short here?

“Mercy is more than goodness; it is more than pity and compassion on the weak and the helpless; it is more than help to the needy. It is kindness, pity, compassion, help and forgiveness to the guilty.” It is unlike “the Pharisee who was unforgiving, vengeful, cruel, relentless, and not even satiated with blood.”[8]

If we are merciful—that mercy originates in Christ who puts this attitude graciously in our hearts. We’re blessed if merciful, instead of being greedy, or callous. Our prescription or reward is “We will be shown mercy.” This benefit is primarily in that God shows mercy to us. Secondarily, God works all things together so that we will be shown some amount of mercy by others. Oh the bliss of the merciful. That is a key to happiness.

Terry Johnson is helpful again:

Jesus does not require that we suspend our moral faculties in order to be merciful. He doesn’t say, ‘blessed are the enablers’ or ‘blessed are the condoners.’ It is not merciful to contribute to another person’s physical, moral, or spiritual destruction. Often the best thing that we can do for another person is to refuse to approve, or condone, or support his or her self-destructive behavior. It is not merciful to hand a drunk a bottle, or an addict his pills, or give approval to a philanderer or homosexual who craves relief or ‘acceptance.’ But it is merciful to see all others as fellow sinners, to sympathize with them in their weakness, and to extend sacrificial help on their behalf. This often involves walking a fine line. Much wisdom is needed if one is to faithfully love the sinner while hat-ing sin. But it is to this that Jesus calls us, promising us that as we have given, so we shall receive.”

Beautifully balanced Christian mercy is another virtue desperately needed and wanted (whether it knows it or not) by the world. Mercy without moral compromise, mercy without hypocrisy, mercy for a harsh and brutal world, is a bright light in a dark land.