We all had something growing up that we really wanted as a kid, right? For me, I had literally one thing that I really hoped that at some point my parents would surprise me with. But there is a little bit of lingering disappointment, maybe resentment is too strong a word, that they never found a way to pull together the money to buy me a Lamborghini Kountash. I think that's a reasonable request, especially when you don't understand how money works. My suggestion to them was write a check. Still don't have one. But it was something that, among other things as well, I deeply longed for. And there was certainly a period in my life, like maybe when I was in like fourth or fifth grade, where I would lay awake at night and be like, if I had three wishes, what would I use them on? And one of them was always on a Lamborghini Kountosh. Because have you seen those? I actually watched a video the other day about somebody who went back and just bought one like last year. The thing looks like a nightmare to drive. So it's for the best for everyone that I didn't get the Lamborghini Countosh. Here's the point: there are tons of things in life that we deeply long for, in which and for which we never receive satisfaction. I'm never getting that car. It's best for me never to get that car. But there's also stuff that we rightly want that we never get satisfaction on. Stuff that it's reasonable to long for, maybe emotionally, maybe socially, maybe in terms of getting to do something or contribute something. It just it just never comes together. And that can be a a tough story. And at least in my country, I would say in the fancy Western world, not like the wild west of West, but like Western civilization West, it's not very desirable in culture to go hungry, to go longing for something, to deeply yearn for something, and then to see that dream or that ambition not be fulfilled. So it's kind of an upside down value once again when we get to Matthew chapter five, the beginning of this Sermon on the Mount, this kingdom manifesto, where Jesus is giving his first big public speech, and he is shooting the moon here, laying out the description of this other world, this other kingdom with upside down values and currency. And we've gotten through a few of these, and he says stuff like Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, blessed are those who mourn, for they'll be comforted, blessed are the meek, for they're going to inherit the earth. All of these things are not really that good in my world. Poor in spirit, mourning, meekness. But apparently in the kingdom, there's something very blessed and even better than what we think of as quaint and blessed, but awesome about being in these positions. And then he says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they'll be filled. Well, hungering and thirsting is not good in the most literal sense. I mean, I don't wish that on anybody, I mean, unless you're trying to go hungry a little bit, the intermittent fasting is uh pretty fashionable. But here once again, Jesus is employing this upside down principle where something that doesn't seem that good is going to be described as actually being good in his kingdom. But it's not just generic hungering and thirsting for food or drink or Lamborghini kuntosh, it's for righteousness. What a weird thing. I mean, I'm used to this turn of the phrase because I've read the Bible for a long time and I like the Sermon on the Mount, but but I d don't think I ever really deeply internalize what this is, and I wish I could say that I deeply internalize all of the Bible passages that we talk about before I put a microphone in my face and start yapping about things, but I I don't. I I try, but it's hard. Some of this stuff makes more sense to me and others doesn't. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is weird because I can picture hungering and thirsting for rightness. I got that. I got that real bad. I got that worse than I had the hankering for the Lamborghini. I want to be right. Who wants to be wrong? That's embarrassing. And who wants to be willfully the bad guy? You know, this weird political dumpster fire thing that we're a part of right now. Have you noticed that it has never occurred to anyone that they're the villain, but it's occurred to everyone that everyone else might be the villain? That is so weird and such a testimony to our capacity to hunger and thirst for rightness. But righteousness is a little bit different. Now, you could argue that in this age of political dumpster fire, we hunger and thirst for righteousness as well, but it's weaponized righteousness. It's public righteousness, it's making sure other people know how many right things we think and how many right things we do so that we can score these nonsense internet points to impress each other, one up each other, and we know that if we achieve this version of public virtue signal righteousness for one end of the spectrum's causes or the others, we know if we achieve that, we can weaponize that into political force and make other people do our thing and get our version of reality that we want. That's not what Jesus is talking about here either. So then righteousness in this context would be bending the knee to the true king, adopting the values of the truer, realer kingdom, and quite frankly, moving on from the values and the currency of the lesser kings and the lesser kingdom. Who hungers and thirsts for that? Well, you don't hunger and thirst for anything that you already have. So the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness must be somebody who realizes they don't have it. Second, the kind of person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is one who believes that that is actually a thing. So the weird thing about righteousness in the in the Bible, in the New Testament in general, is that you can't have it. Is isn't yours. You can't make that happen, you can't generate it. We don't get any impression that the righteousness of God, that is the right standing, the right orientation, literally sinless perfection and being completely aligned to the will of God, that's not something that can be self-generated. And this is kind of a simple logic problem here, but you got two categories, right? You got the perfect and you got the imperfect. Um perfect is literally one hundred percent pure. It's it's untainted by whatever its opposite nature is, whereas imperfect, I mean anything ranging from complete d sewer awful disaster all the way up to almost perfect, but with one teeny tiny little dash of not perfect at all, it still fits into the category of imperfect. It doesn't really matter how much. And this is very much a Christian thought Bible motif, Jesus motif that we see throughout the scriptures. And in that larger context, which we're gonna look at here in just a second, this phrase cannot be taken to mean hunger and thirst for righteousness that an individual can attain through being really, really awesome and godlike and getting everything right on their own. No, instead, again, it's a position of being poor in spirit, it's a position of being meek, it's a position of being in need and understanding that God is the one who can fill that hunger and thirst for righteousness. And indeed, the promise is the person who wants this will be filled. So you don't have to scroll very far down here in the Bible to get a little bit of clarification on what Jesus might be talking about. In fact, just a little further down in Matthew 5, we're gonna take a ton of time on this later, so I won't get into it much. People are sitting around and they're like, Well, what kind of how do we get the righteousness then? What does that look like? And then he goes on to say, I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, the most impressively righteous people you could imagine, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus, in twenty verses of range here in Matthew chapter five, has blown up the entire notion of what righteousness is and how you get it. He's changing the equation immediately out of the gate from righteousness earned by incredible self-discipline, by mastering the social nuance of a moment in history, for a righteousness that is achieved by writing rules that go on top of the actual rules to protect you from breaking the maybe rules, a righteousness that is achieved by being born into the right situation, trained the right way, intellectually assenting to a perfect set of beliefs and principles and facts and Bible ideas, that is attainable. No, it's not attainable. He is blowing up that idea and rather suggesting that righteousness is achieved only as a provision of God. Now, I've already gone too long, so we're gonna have to break this up into two episodes here, so we're gonna come back around to this. He's gonna clear that up a little bit further as we move forward in the Sermon on the Mount, and then I'm gonna bounce ahead to some Bible a little later on. So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna hit timeout on one single point here. We're pausing on this point. So, long story short, I know what it is to long for something that's way outside my reach, like a Lamborghini Kuntosh. I also know what it's like to just deeply and earnestly hunger and thirst for something that I super, super need. And the language that Jesus is employing here is kind of a combination of both of those. To hunger and thirst is an earnest desire for something that is needed, but then righteousness is something that we can't get on our own. So in the values of this kingdom now, we got a little bit of a problem that's set up. It is blessed to hunger and thirst for something that we desperately need, but that we cannot obtain on our own. More on that tomorrow. And last thing here, I've been talking about this Psalms project deal that my friend Shane does. It's super good. And two episodes ago, I played a song at the end. I'm gonna do another one here. It is so weird to hear really beautifully performed psalms that aren't the happy ones. So I'm gonna go dig around here and find one of the not happy psalms that wrestles with a little bit trickier stuff and play it because I think it's awesome. Alright, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Liver Podcast. Enjoy the song. We'll catch you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Oh Lord, will you forget me? Hello. Will you hide your face from me? Search for answers in myself. Sadness in my heart every day.