Hunger & Thirst for Righteousness

THE WAY BACK HOME

Blessed are those who Those Who Hunger & Thirst for Righteousness | Part 4

Jen Smith | [email protected]

 

Jesus' Audience: This home is made up of people with needs

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed him.

Matthew 4:23-25

...and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all.

Luke 6:19

 

The Word Blessed: In this Home there is Happiness

This is who you are.
Come home to who you really are.

“Bless-ed refers to a spiritual condition of divinely gifted joy already present, not a requirement to be fulfilled in order to receive a reward.”

- Kenneth Bailey

“The beatitudes are chiefly an announcement, a proclamation that now, because of Jesus, everything will be different.”

- Glenn Packiam

 

Repentance: The Action to Get Home

From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near."

Matthew 4:17

 

Uncomfortable Longing: In this Home you will Ache

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Matthew 5:6

 

Righteousness: What We Care about in our Home

“In a broad sense, dikaiosune means “the state of things being right” or “things as they should be.”

- Kevin Post

 

This righteousness is all about relationships.

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

Matthew 22:36-40

“..it is better to take this righteousness as simultaneously personal righteousness and justice in the broadest sense. These people hunger and thirst, not only that they may be righteous (i.e., that they may wholly do God’s will from the heart), but that justice may be done everywhere. All unrighteousness grieves them and makes them homesick for the new heaven and the new earth-the home of righteousness. Satisfied with neither personal righteousness alone nor social justice alone, they cry for both: in short, they long for the advent of the messianic kingdom.”

- D. A. Carson

 

This righteousness is both personal and communal.

We can experience satisfaction from God as we long for this righteousness both personally and communally, now and in the future.

There is no one righteous, not even one; There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, They together have become worthless; There is no one who does good, not even one.

Romans 3:13-18

Their throats are open graves; Their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God in their eyes.

Romans 3:13-18

But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Romans 3:21

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:3-4

But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

2 Peter 3:13

 

Which group do you see yourself in? What action is the Spirit prompting you to do?