Kingdom Logic (Part 3)

Welcome to episode 239 of Grasp the Bible. In this episode, Pastor Drew continues our study entitled Kingdom Logic. Today we will cover:

• “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” — Matthew 5:6

• Why righteousness — not happiness — is the pathway to the blessed life.

Key Takeaways:

· The first three Beatitudes reveal man’s need — the fourth reveals the remedy.

· God promises that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled.

· The blessed life comes through holiness, not fortune, fame, or comfort.

· God’s standard is perfect righteousness — and Christ is our righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30).

· Biblical hunger is desperate, inward, and all-consuming — not partial or “right-ish.”

· Our ultimate satisfaction is not circumstances, but Jesus Himself.

Quotable:

· “The first three express the need — the fourth provides the remedy.”

· “The blessed people seek holiness before happiness.”

· “Not right-ish — righteous.”

· “Where there is desire for righteousness, there will be filling — and the filling will be Christ Himself.”

Application:

· Examine what you are truly hungry for.

· Stop pursuing happiness apart from holiness.

· Desire complete righteousness, not surface improvement.

· Seek first the Kingdom (Matthew 6:33).

· Remember — your satisfaction is Christ.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Grass the Bible is a podcast of Spring Baptist Church that walks through selected books in the Bible verse by verse, as well as spends time exploring biblical ideas and topics to help you understand and apply God's Word in your daily life. On this week's podcast, we're joined by Drew Boucher, the pastor to students here at Spring Baptist Church. This is our 238th episode. I'm Marty Richardson, one of your co-hosts. Thank you for joining us today. Pastor Drew, it's good to have you with us. Yeah, I'm so glad to be here. Well, we are um continuing on in our spring series. Do you want to let everybody know what we're uh talking about today?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Yes, we are in week three. Uh we're looking at week three of our series, Kingdom Logic, and we're actually looking at the fourth Beatitude today. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Well, that is something that is m very needed, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. So, what is that thing we need to be on the lookout for as we get ready for today's time?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, as we dive into this, I think we need to realize uh that righteousness, not happiness, is the pathway to the blessed life. Righteousness, not happiness, is the pathway to the blessed life. And we're gonna see that we get all that we need uh when we hunger and thirst for it.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

That sounds pretty deep.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Isn't that amazing? God is so good to give us a book with all the answers in it. Absolutely. Well, very good. Well, let's jump into today's study.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

We are continuing in our series Kingdom Logic, where we are diving into the Beatitudes and we are looking at uh how we are supposed to live as Christ followers versus how the world is supposed to live. Because there's two kingdoms, and we have to see how we should be living as believers. So, question for you Are you hungry? Is anybody in here hungry already? Has anybody not eaten dinner yet? I've not eaten dinner yet. I'm hungry, okay? And now we say some weird things when it comes to food, like uh we tell each other that we're gonna be what we eat, right? Which is true to a degree. We're gonna be what we eat, and we're gonna see that tonight too. But you know, we also like, you know, gotta make a happy plate, right? We we say that you gotta make a happy plate, you gotta eat all your food, right? Which is sometimes good advice if you have a toddler who's trying to learn how to eat, but maybe not always if somebody's already full, right? You know? Well, we had some friends in high school, and when I was in high school, and instead of saying you have to make a happy plate, because that'd be weird if I looked at my friend and said, Are you gonna make a happy plate? Uh no, that'd be weird to say that to another 17-year-old kid. But we had a a way that we would make sure that, hey, you gotta man up and eat the rest of your food, all right? And so we said, Don't stop because it hurts, right? And uh, so it was just a joke we had because we loved going to Chipotle and we loved going to Free Birds, and we'd get these giant burritos, right? And sometimes we would try to eat it and say, if a piece of rice falls on the ground, you lose, right? You have to try to eat it precisely. And one time, my friend Brian, we convinced to get like this super monster burrito from Freebirds, and he begins to eat it. And about halfway through, right, he's like giving up. And so me and my three friends were sitting there and we're like, dude, are you a man? Like, come on, let's go. Don't stop because it hurts, right? And and uh, you know, I'm like, Aren't you 6'6? You should be able to eat this like nothing, right? And so we're just like, you know, egging him on, and he eats this entire burrito, right? And it's like three in the afternoon. We had just played volleyball, and we were gonna meet up that night to watch a movie. And apparently for the next seven hours, he went into a food coma at his house just asleep, and we called him at 10 when the movie started, and he showed back up, right? And so uh all all that to say, uh, you know, we say the craziest things, but when it comes to food tonight, we're gonna see that we're supposed to hunger and thirst for righteousness, but the reason that we're phrasing it that way is because we live in a world that is hungering and thirsting and is forcing themselves to eat all these different things that they will think bring them fulfillment and joy and pleasure and happiness. And they're looking for this ultimate fulfillment and this ultimate happiness, and they're not gonna find it in the things they're trying to consume. But we're gonna look tonight and see what the Bible tells us about this. And so in Matthew chapter 5, we're gonna read verses 3 through 6 this evening, and here's what it says Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Now, as we look at this tonight, first, we've we've already begun talking about these in the past. And before I pray for us here in just a second, I want us to remember a couple of big things that we've talked about because it'll remind us of what we're reading here. Based on the context, we know that Jesus is teaching and that these beatitudes are a self-portrait of him, right? He's perfect. Who embodies poor in spirit more? Who embodies the meek more, willing to submit to God even to death on a cross? Who embodies a hunger and thirst for righteousness more than Jesus? And who embodies all of those blessings more than him? Whose is the kingdom of God? It's Jesus's. Who will be satisfied? It's Jesus, right? And we see all of these things, but not only is it a self-portrait of him, but it is a portrait being completed of us, that this is who we are supposed to be becoming. We're supposed to be more and more like Jesus. But the other thing we see in this as well is not only is it a portrait of Jesus and a self-portrait of Jesus and a portrait that we are becoming, but we also see that the blessed life or the good life is a fulfilling life, right? Is a faithful life. It's not about being blessed, it's about being faithful. The blessed life is about being faithful. That's who it's for. And being faithful doesn't mean we miss out on any of the blessings. No, it's faithful, which means we get all the fulfillment of what it means to be a Christ follower. Now, I want to pray for us, and then we're gonna dive into uh verse six tonight as we look at blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Dear Jesus, we love you. Thank you for uh bringing us together tonight. God, just as we uh dive into your word right now, God, just remove anything of us. Uh remove our desires, our wants, uh, our sin. God, we just lay it at your feet. We empty ourselves and we just ask to be filled. God, remove everything of me and speak through me and teach us from your word. We love you so much. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So as we look at this, one of the cool things about the Beatitudes, specifically the first four, is that there are progression that build upon each other, a natural progression, a logical progression that we see. Okay? So the first three, right? Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, and who are the meek, is us first expressing our need to Jesus. That's what we see first. We're expressing our need, and we're expressing the approach needed to be spiritually happy or to be spiritually blessed, right? And so the first three express the need, and the fourth one, the one we're reading tonight, expresses the remedy. So the first three are the need, the fourth is the remedy. So a lot of times in the world we hear if this, then this, right? Right? Like if you take this pill, then you will have more hair, right? But side effects, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, uh, all might happen to you, right? You can watch any like farm pharmaceutical commercial and it says, if you take this, then this, but consult your doctor because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, this is an if-then statement that we can take to the bank. There are no, well, if you pursue righteousness and hunger and thirst, right, then this will happen. No, what he's saying is if a man hungers and thirsts for righteousness, God will fill him with righteousness and declare him righteous. So that means we will be seen before God as righteous, and if you hunger and thirst for righteousness now that you've been declared righteous before God, you will now be filled with righteousness. Now, Dr. Martin Lloyd, a man that I read in one of my commentaries, he said, I do not know a better test that anyone can apply to himself or herself than a verse like verse 6. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of Scripture, you can be quite certain you are a Christian. If it is not, then you had better examine the foundations again. So if you find blessing in the fact that blessed is the one who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, then you will be satisfied. If you find that as a precious verse and not an obligatory verse or a verse that you have to do begrudgingly, because you're a Christ follower, I gotta live righteously, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. If you view it like that, then it says, hey, check the foundations of your faith. But if not, if the hunger and thirst for righteousness is in your life, man, then you can be assured of your salvation. Verse six is precious to believers because it answers man's greatest need with God's greater remedy, Jesus. Listen to that again. Verse six is precious to us because it answers man's greatest need with God's greater remedy, Jesus. We're looking for satisfaction, and the answer is a hunger and thirst for righteousness found only in Jesus. So now as we look at hunger and thirst for righteousness, we're gonna look at, we're gonna take that apart and take apart what it means to desire righteousness. So the question then first is what brings you to God? What is causing you to come before God? Right? Uh it says we must come to Him seeking righteousness, right? Who hunger and thirst for righteousness. If we come seeking anything else, it's not righteousness, right? Look at the prodigal son, right? He left his dad, the father, he left God in pursuit of other things. How many people come to God in pursuit of their happiness, in pursuit of what they want rather than in pursuit of righteousness? And so that's the first thing is a desire for righteousness is the entry point into salvation with God. Right? And that's what we see in the gospel. Admit you're a sinner, right? I'm not righteous, I'm poor in spirit, I'm mournful over my sin. Believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again. I'm meek, there's nothing I can do, God, I'm humble before you. And then, and confess that you're gonna follow him for the rest of your life, that he's Lord. I'm gonna pursue righteousness. I know that righteousness is only found in you, Jesus. So you must come to God seeking righteousness. Some come seeking happiness or blessedness, and the blessed and happy people are those who seek holiness before God, not just happiness. So the question is, how do you try to attain happiness? Some try to do it through uh fame, fortune, marriage, sex, identity. They try to find their happiness or their blessedness or what we call the good life through all sorts of different things. But happiness or blessedness comes only through righteousness. And so you're asking, okay, why is that the only way to be happy, to be truly happy? Why must that be so? Well, after we take a simple examination of God's word, we're gonna conclude that that's the only way we can get true happiness. Because here's what it says in James 1:17. All of those things we long for, fortune, fame, all of those different things, it says this every good gift, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Now, all of those good things, everything that the world is searching for, we learn, can only come from God. But the thing is, God is holy, and he cannot and he will not have dealings with those who are not holy. And so, if you want that happiness, that fulfillment, that joy, that can only come from your Maker, it has to come from fellowship with God, and we have a broken fellowship with God. In fact, we're enemies with God because of our unrighteousness. The only way to enter fellowship with God and find the blessing he longs for is to possess a righteousness and holiness that is acceptable to him. And until we find that righteousness and holiness that is acceptable to him, we have no hope of that ultimate joy and fulfillment. So, what is righteousness? Well, righteousness first is God's nature, it's God's nature. Psalm 11, 7 says, For the Lord is righteous and he loves righteous deeds. God at the beginning of creation, he is the initiator. He was the initiator of our world, he's the initiator of what is right and wrong, and what is right and wrong is his character, right? And he was gracious enough to not just let us try to figure it out, he gave it to us, and he told us what is right and what is wrong. But not only is he the initiator, he's the creator, and he's the only one that can create. And so righteousness is God's nature, but it's also God's standard. And so it's his nature, but then he told us, and so now it's his standard. Deuteronomy chapter 5, Moses receives the Ten Commandments. Right? He receives the Ten Commandments, and then immediately following in Deuteronomy chapter 6, we get the greatest commandment. And here's what he says. Here's what uh Moses says on behalf of God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall ride them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates. Now look at what this says here, what he says at the end of Exodus six. At the end of Exodus six, in the last verse, he says, But Moses said, uh, Deuteronomy chapter six. I'm like, um, in Deuteronomy chapter six, he says this. I'm like, that is it was it was about something totally different. I was like, that is that is not what it's about. Okay, in Deuteronomy chapter six, it says this in verse 25, and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God as he commanded. So it will be righteousness for us if we do all that he has commanded. Now, here's the thing about that we can't do all that he commanded, right? We're incapable of keeping all of those commandments. And Jesus is gonna elaborate that not only have you not been keeping them, but you've been even messing up more than you think you did, right? Because, you know, you've heard it said, thou shalt not murder, but I have said to you, if you, right, he he gives layers to it that if we even hate somebody in our heart, we have committed murder, right? And so we see righteousness is God's nature, God's standard, and now is God's gift. And the point of Matthew, the whole point of the book of Matthew, like one of the ways that most scholars will look at the book of Matthew, is Matthew is trying to share the gospel of Jesus in such a way to show that Jesus came to fulfill the law. Not to get rid of it, but to fulfill it. And so, in that, when we look at Matthew chapter 22, which happens after what we're reading right here, he said, He said this. When the teacher of the law asks, when somebody asks him, hey teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? He looks at him and he says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is great in the first commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and prophets. So he was simplifying all of the commandments for them, right? So, what had the Pharisees and the Sadducees been doing? They had been taking the commandments and they had been saying, okay, here's the commandments, then here's the everything we received in Leviticus and the sacrificial law and all this, and now here's all the ones that we came up with to add on to it so that we don't get near this, right? And Jesus is saying, Hey, listen, I'm telling you, all of the law and prophets can be fulfilled with these two things. And he says, Love the Lord and love others. But then in his Sermon on the Mount, right after we read the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us in verses uh 17 through 20 of Matthew chapter five, he says, Do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law, until all is accomplished. You know why? Because God is by nature righteousness, and the law was his standard that he gave to us. And so God who has never changed, his law is never changing, he's not talking about uh he's talking about the moral law here, right? And so as he looks at this, he says, not an iota of that, not a dot will pass from the law. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And so what does he say here? He says, Unless you can do what all of these religious rulers who have invented all these extra steps to be righteous, unless you can do more than them, you'll never enter the kingdom. And the truth is we can't do it by ourselves. But we see that righteousness is a gift, and that Jesus was our gift. In 1 Corinthians 1, chapter 30, it phrases it like this: it says, And because of him, because of God, our initiator, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. To us, Jesus is our wisdom. He's how we know how we should live. To us, Jesus is our righteousness, he is our standard. But not only is he our standard, but he is our justification. He is what Jesus, he is what God sees so that we don't face The wrath we so deserve. And he's our sanctification. He is what is making us more and more into the image of him and making us more and more. And he is what bought us with his blood. So first we see here a desire for righteousness, but then next we see a desire for perfect righteousness. Now, what is perfect righteousness? Well, what do I mean by this? Alright, I use the phrase past the righteousness, okay, because I want us to think that we're all sitting at a table here for a minute, okay? You're sitting at a table with your parents, right? Uh at some point we've all had to learn manners for sitting at a table, okay? And so I'm sitting there and my mom puts rolls on the table. So I reach for one and I just go for it, right? What are you doing? Sit down. That's not what you do at the table, right? You have to ask, okay, can I have a role? What's the magic word? Can I please have a role? You can. Yes, you can have a role, right? See, what we what we should see here, right, is that God, Jesus said, He said, and he said it in Greek, right? Not in English, but when he said it, he said, for those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now, hunger and thirst in in the Greek language were always said in the genitive case. So it would be like hunger and thirst for some of whatever you were about to say. So hunger and thirst for some of the bread. Hunger and thirst for because you're not gonna eat all of the bread, right? Not all of the bread that's ever been in existence. You're asking for some, right? So hunger and thirst was always followed by some. But Jesus, in this case, he didn't use the genitive, he used the accusative. And he said, I need all of the bread. He said, You must hunger and thirst for all of the righteousness. And so somebody should have been like, Jesus, you said all of, you're supposed to say some of, right? But no, he said all of with intention because it's not a partial or imperfect righteousness, but we're supposed to hunger and thirst for the whole thing, equal to and identical to God's righteousness, right? That's what we're supposed to hunger and thirst for. Not a partial righteousness, not a better than my neighbor righteousness, but a whole righteousness. I like to phrase it like this: not right-ish, righteous, right? I'm not right-ish, I'm righteous. That's what we need to be hungering for. And the third thing we see is a desire, uh, we need to desire righteousness intensely, right? It uses this phrase hunger and thirst. Now, in that day, you know, we get hungry and we get hangry and we get thirsty, right? But they had people in that day that were dying of hunger and thirst. And when they would travel, they would have to hope that they had enough water to make it to whatever they were going that had a well, right? And so for him to talk about hunger and thirst, he's talking about an intense desire. He's basically asking us, how much do you want it? Do you want it as much as a starving man or a thirsting man? Do you want it desperately enough to be filled? There's an illustration in uh this commentary. He he quotes uh from a book uh called The Last Crusade, um, and it talks about Major V. Gilbert. Okay, and uh this Major was uh he was in this British liberation of Palestine in World War I. And this doctor, Dr. Blaylock, wrote about this and uses it out as an illustration to talk to us about righteousness. And here's what he says: driving up from Beersheba, a combined force of British, Australians, and New Zealanders were pressing on the rear of the Turkish retreat over arid desert. The attack outdistanced its water-carrying camel train. Water bottles were empty, the sun blazed pitilessly out of the sky, where the vultures wheeled expectantly. Our head ached, writes Gilbert, and our eyes became bloodshot and dim in the blinding glare. Our tongues began to swell, our lips turned a purplish black and burst. Those who dropped out of the column were never seen again, but the desperate force battled on to Sharia. There were wells at Sharia, and had they been unable to take the place by nightfall, thousands were doomed to die of thirst. We fought that day, writes Gilbert. As men fight for their lives, we entered Sharia station on the heels of the retreating Turks. The first objects which met our view were the great stone cisterns full of cold, clear drinking water. In the still night air, the sound of water running into the tanks could be distinctly heard, maddening in its nearness. Yet not a man murmured when orders were given for the battalions to fall in, too deep facing the cisterns. He describes the stern priorities, the wounded, those on guard duty, and then company by company, it took four hours before the last man had his drink of water. And in all that time they had been standing twenty feet from a low stone wall, on the other side of which were thousands of gallons of water. I believe, Major Gilbert concludes, that we all learned our first real Bible lesson on that march from Beersheba to Shiria Wells. If such were our thirst for God, for righteousness, for his will in our life, a consuming, all-embracing, preoccupying desire, how rich in fruits of the Spirit would we be. And so I just point this out for us because this is the desire in which that Jesus is calling us to desire righteousness. And if we look at the characteristics of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the characteristics of those who do that are one, they love what is good, versus the the kingdom of the world who who uh who hates what is good. You know, and sometimes we we we say we're bored of what is good, right? And so the characteristic is love what is good. The other characteristic is hate what is evil versus longing for what is evil, versus loving what is evil, versus wanting what is evil. And Romans 12, 9 tells us this, and it talks about both of these, loving what is good and hating what is evil. It says it like this let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. It should make us sick when we see evil, not only in our world, which we're very easy to say, man, that is so wrong, I can't believe what's happening, but it should make us sick when we see evil present in our own homes, family, in us personally. We should be hangry for righteousness, right? You guys ever been hangry? I've been hangry more than I wish I could be, right? Lydia and I tell each other that we can't both be hangry at the same time because then nothing gets done and we both get more hangry, right? But have you ever had been so hangry and you find figured out what you wanted to eat, and then somebody tried to tell you to eat something else, right? And you were like, How dare you suggest that? I was gonna eat a bowl of cereal, right? Like whatever you had found as your thing that you were about to eat, you were hungry and thirsty for that one thing, right? Well, that's how we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be hangry for righteousness. And if anything else comes in between us and that, we're like, how dare you suggest that that's what I would want. I don't want that, right? And the more you hunger and thirst for righteousness, the more angry you'll be when you aren't righteous, right? Because we're not called to be passive about our sin. We're called to be active, we're called to be angry, we're called to abhor, to be sickened by it. For example, this calendar year, right? I've been trying to wake up at an ungodly time of day, right? But you know what I've found now? Now I'm angry if I don't wake up at that time, if something prevents me from taking that time, right? Because I know the benefits that have come from that, right? And so that's what it should be for us in the pursuit of righteousness. We should be angry when we're not, because we know the benefits of following Jesus. We know how good it is for us. And so we have this these characteristics. And Jesus continues in his Sermon on the Mount talking about righteousness, and he tells us that it's not supposed to be just an external, but an internal pursuit of righteousness. And a final characteristic is we're supposed to seek first his righteousness. It should be of the utmost priority, right? And when I talk about the external, he said, don't be like, after he lists all the, you've heard it said this, and now you should do this, right? You've heard, don't commit adultery. I tell you, if you lust with your eyes, you've already done it, right? After he goes through that list of things, then he says, Don't be like the Pharisees and scribes who make their faith public and they do it for you to see, right? So we see that he's talking about an inward righteousness that can be seen outwardly at times, but it's about the inward heart. So after we see those characteristics, and after we've learned what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, we learn that Christ is our satisfaction. It says, For they shall be satisfied. Now, Jesus here is our satisfaction. He tells the woman at the well, he says, Hey, you know, I have living water. So you'll never thirst again. She's like, hey, tell me what this living water is. I've heard that there's this Messiah coming, and he reveals to her one of the first people, hey, I'm He, right? And He is our living water. And then we see that He is our bread of life. He is what sustains us, He is what satisfies us. And it reminds me of, just like Jesus gave a nod to Psalm chapter 1 with his Beatitudes when he says, blessed, blessed, blessed, we see there that you can either be planted by the stream and get all you need, or you can be planted away and you'll be like chaff, just in the wind, useless. And then in Psalm 42, we get this description of a deer panting for water, as my soul longs for you. Where there is desire for righteousness, there will be filling, and the filling will be Christ Himself. Maybe it's just because we are in this fallen world, you might be saying, maybe you're saying that, hey, the only reason why we really want to pursue righteousness that much and pursue Jesus that much is because we need him in this world. When we get to heaven, it'll be different because we'll be made right and we won't need him in the same way that we need him now. But it's not just a drop of water for desperate people while they're here on earth. Look at what will happen when we get to eternity. One of my favorite songs right now is called Crowns Down. And in the song it goes, I will lay my crowns down at your feet. You are worthy, so worthy. And that's the judgment seat of Christ. When we come before, and yes, he's gonna point out some of the things, and he's gonna hold us accountable for some of the ways that we didn't follow him when we should have. But he's also gonna give us our rewards. He's gonna give us our crowns, the crowns that Pastor Mark mentioned this morning. He's gonna give those to him. And our response, Revelation chapter four, says our response to getting our rewards in heaven is not to begin strutting down the golden streets, but is to be like, hey, here's my crowns. You're my reward. That's what it is. Hunger and thirst for righteousness. And who is righteousness? Jesus. And when we get to heaven, it's not gonna change because we have now been made righteous completely. No, we're still gonna be like God. I can't wait for the day where I get to throw down my crowns and say, God, you're my prize. Because guess what? If you did it for the crowns here on earth, then you're not gonna be there receiving crowns one day. Okay, we're not doing it for the crowns, we're doing it for Jesus because we're hungering and thirsting for him. And so I can't wait for that moment. And in fact, it encourages me today because guess what? Our reward is not the crowns, our reward is Jesus. And let's pray tonight and thank God that we get to hunger and thirst for him in a world that's hungry and thirsty for everything else. Let's pray. Dear Jesus, we love you. God, we're grateful that you are our satisfaction, that you are our standard, and that you loved us so much. And you didn't have to, but you came down and lived a perfect life and died on the cross. And through the power of the Holy Spirit, you revealed your word to people for generations after generations, and it was written down for us to study and to try to strive to live like you. Not for our own selfishness, not for our own reward, God. But because we love you and we desire to be like you and we desire righteousness. God, create in us a new heart and renew a right spirit within us. God, the things in our life that are evil, help us to be sick of them. God, the things in our life that cause us to stumble, help us remove them. God, we love you so much and thank you for teaching us from your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Thank you for that. Now, as we like to do every time we're together, we take a moment after the teaching time and sort of flush out the big idea, the key takeaway for today. So, Pastor Drew, what is that key takeaway for today?

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Well, I think that what we're gonna see is that it's been a progression the first three weeks. The first three weeks really expressed man's need. Uh, it was, you know, we're poor in spirit, we mourn our sin, we are meek before the Lord, and when we enter into that place, now we're ready to be filled. And blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied. And so, in that uh, we learned that our ultimate satisfaction is not circumstances, but Jesus himself. And so it's a super cool thing when you realize that Jesus is your reward, Jesus is your fulfillment, he's your joy. And yeah, that's a really cool truth that m doesn't make sense to people unless you know Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

And and I think that I I I love that idea because sometimes we make a list of things. You go, okay, I'm gonna be good at this, good at this, good at this, good at this, good at this, and now I'm a great Christian. Yeah. And and you go, and if you're not careful, the goal becomes a set of behavioral modifications. But like you said, it's man, I love that idea that Jesus is the goal. He's also the strength to reach the goal, which is kind of cool too. Absolutely. And um, but but that also, like, for me as a worship pastor, like I could say, you know, you may have failed this week, but Jesus is the goal. Let's just go to the feet of Jesus, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

I I one time I was I was talking to Pastor Mark and he was like preaching a sermon on something like Balaam's donkey or something. I'm like, I don't have any songs about Balaam's donkey. And he's like, let's sing about Jesus and everything else kind of works out. Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm like, I kind of feel like we can apply that here. This love Jesus, follow Jesus, be like Jesus, everything else will work out. Well, how do we apply that? Like the the the big idea there.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

How how do we apply that? Yeah, I mean we first have to examine whether or not we are truly hungry for it. And we have to desire complete righteousness, not just surface level righteousness. I said it like this our goal is not to be right-ish, it's to be righteous. And um and I think we are to seek that first, um, is what we see in Matthew 633. And so and I think it's really cool because you know, in in a different, this is a secular, I listen to it as a coach, and it just has good like habit training type things. Um and it says sometimes we uh wait for the motivation to move, right? But actually a lot of times movement will inspire motivation. And so uh for us, I think just starting to hunger and thirst for righteousness will begin to produce in us righteousness, and that will build a hunger and a thirst for what we just tasted. And uh I think that's super cool. And so and there's a promise to that. You know, it's a promise we can take to the bank too, because when God promises something, it'll be true, right? And this is an if-then statement. If you do this, then this will happen, and it's coming from the mouth of Jesus, so it's going to happen. And so where there is a desire for righteousness righteousness, there will be filling, and the filling will be Christ Himself. Oh, that's so good. And so it's a really cool truth. And uh, you know, sometimes we just have to take action and pursue righteousness and and watch how the Holy Spirit changes us when we are obese.

SPEAKER_02 41:29

Oh, that's such a good a good word. It you know, um, in marital counseling, sometimes when you're sitting across and people are like, they're just really struggling, their marriage is falling apart. Sometimes you have to like I look at them and say, I need you to, it's gonna be terrible. I want you to fake it until you make it for a little while. I want you to treat each other with love. I want you to take each other on dates, I want you to to to interact with each other in a loving way. And it's funny when people start doing that, they begin to to to do it more and more. And it's it's amazing how God does that. Now, as a pause, if we talk about righteousness, um I I had a pastor tell me one time, um, and and and this is one of those things that's just kind of in a pause on the side. Um, he said, Sometimes as Christians, we like to fight a lot, you know, like with everybody about such. And he said, You can be right or prove yourself right, or you can be righteous, but very rarely you can be both.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

And and I was thinking about that, I was like, Yeah, right, righteousness doesn't depend on me fighting, it depends on me surrendering to Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

And and and I love that idea because man, if you're always fighting, you get tired and hurry.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, my dad said it like this it's not about being right, it's about being the right person. And was your dad a coach? My dad was a coach and also a pastor. And so Yeah, I felt it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

I love it though, man. I love it. I feel it. That needs to be on a t-shirt. All right. We should tell him that in his little t-shirts, you know. Well, very good. But anything else as we wrap up today?

SPEAKER_00 43:05

No, uh, I'm just excited to continue our series uh as we continue to dive into the Beatitudes and see uh what kingdom logic looks like while we're here on earth.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Oh, so good, so good. Thank you for joining us today. As always, we don't take it for granted that you've spent your time and made it all the way to the end of the podcast. We appreciate that. And we just really want to encourage you to keep on studying God's word because we know this, it changed our lives, and we hope the same for you. Join us next week as we continue to grasp the Bible.