March 15, 2026 Dr. Mark Turman - The Soul's Appetite

Dr. Mark Turman — 2026-03-15

Chapters:

• 00:00 — Welcome & Introduction
• 04:34 — The Sermon on the Mount
• 06:33 — Understanding Righteousness
• 12:02 — Righteousness: A Gift Received
• 17:11 — Righteousness: A Commitment Pursued
• 25:07 — Righteousness: A Compassion Shared
• 30:57 — The Promise of Being Filled
• 32:01 — Concluding Prayer

Transcript

0:03

Every day is Easter because of that first Easter that we'll celebrate soon. Uh, some of you are aware, some of you may not know, we are in the presence of a walking miracle. And so Jordan, we are so happy for you and for your family after such a serious accident. Yes. All that is, uh, to God's credit and, um, Jordan has just been a fighter and continues to be and we are just absolutely rejoicing with all of you. Uh, and thank you for letting us share in your adventure. And um, you know, we, we often talk about our prayer requests. We don't always talk as much as we should about God's answers to prayer. Jordan is certainly that. Uh, Jim and Margaret Ann, uh, McKenzie are certainly testament, testaments to that. We look forward to them returning to us in a few weeks after surgery this week. And we just continue to be grateful to God for all of the ways that he is, uh, taking care of us. Many of which we know about, some of which we overlook. And so, uh, hope you'll share with each other in that way. Thank you for singing this morning, by the way. One of the signs of a great healthy church is that we sing joyfully and sometimes loudly together. And uh, this is a beautiful, wonderful building to get to do that in. Uh, I want to let you know, some of you have asked about who's coming to preach and we share that with you, uh, every week. Many of you have asked, or some of you have asked if Dr. Joel Gregory is coming back soon. He'll be here in early May. And so if you are a fan of Dr. Gregory, uh, he will be back with us soon. I also want to let you know that there's a special treat if you're back at the lake, uh, or available next Sunday. Josh Miller will be coming to share God's word with you. Josh, uh, is one of my colleagues at Denison Ministries. You may or may not know that the chapel is a partnership ministry between the chapel and Denison Ministries in Dallas. Uh, Josh is the recently named, this is, oh by the way, not public news until later this week, so you're getting to hear it first. But Josh is our newly named chief executive officer. He's been with the ministry about six years and, uh, he has recently been raised to that new position. And he's going to come. He's also a significant and and effective Bible teacher, has served on staff at the First Baptist Church of Richardson in the past. Uh, now some of you are going to instantly wonder, does that mean Dr. Denison is going to retire? Actually, no. Uh, Jim is now going to focus on his other title, which is Chief Visionary Officer. And so he's going to be writing as much as ever, uh, and is going to continue to focus on the mission and vision of our ministry and will contribute in that way. But Josh will have a lot of other responsibilities in kind of the day-to-day operations of what we're doing. Let me give you another, uh, secret that's coming. Right after Easter, we're going to release a special newsletter that Dr. Denison has written about America's 250th anniversary. And so those will be coming out on a weekly basis starting in the middle of April and that might be something that you're interested in. We're also letting you know that uh, we're releasing, you can get your free copy of this at the back. This is Dr. Denison's book called Wrestling with God. This is not a new book. He actually wrote this book quite a while ago. But this is his personal story about the questions that he had about God when he was growing up. And how some of those things really were a challenge to him becoming a Christian. Uh, this is the first book that our ministry ever published about 17 years ago. And uh, if you'd like a copy of that, grab that. If you want one for a friend, grab one as well on your way out. And uh, that'll be a great blessing to you. Easter's coming in a few weeks and uh, there'll probably be quite a few people here. And uh, we'd also like a little bit of help. We're looking for a couple of volunteers to help us corral children and, uh, help that to be a meaningful day. Claire is going to lead our efforts in that, but we're looking for a couple of volunteers for each of the services. We will have two services on Easter. If you'd like to help out in that way, talk to Claire, talk to me, talk to Mike, talk to Sheila. We'll get you hooked up into that opportunity to serve. All right? So, this morning, I want to turn your attention to a little bit of what Jesus said in his most famous sermon in Matthew chapter 5. I am a child of the '70s and '80s. That is, I came of age, they say, in the '70s and '80s. I uh, graduated from high school in '81, graduated from college in '85, got married in '86, and we've been off to the races ever since. Because of when I was born, I am very much a product of television. Now, if that seems like an archaic piece of technology, well, that's just where I came from, all right? And there are certain phrases that I learned as a child that are still with me and they just kind of rumble around as echoes in my brain. When I was coming of age in the 70s, my parents let me watch for the first time late night television. And I would sometimes sit on the edge of their bed, sometimes crawl up in between my mom and dad while they were watching a guy by the name of Johnny Carson. And Johnny Carson would tell jokes, good jokes, unlike the jokes you see on late night television now. And one of the times that Johnny Carson almost every did this almost every night, he would tell a joke about something that had happened in the news and he would end the joke by saying, film it 11. Film it 11.

I also remember in those days that the news that came on every afternoon and evening, they would always tell you somewhere around 3:00 or 4:00 o'clock, "Hey, join us at 6:00 and 10: 5:57

00 for all the news." Remember phrases like that? Another one that came in this era has to do with your thirst. Because it was in the late 70s that we became acquainted with a thing called Gatorade. And the very first advertisement for Gatorade, do you remember it? Give your body what it's thirsty for. Well, I want to talk about how Jesus wants to give your soul what it's hungry for. In the opening of his sermon, Jesus started talking about the characteristics of the people who would follow him. They are called the Beatitudes, and today I just want to read to you a couple of them. Matthew chapter 5 verse 6 says this, as Jesus is describing the kind of people that will be be a part of his kingdom on earth and in eternity. He says this in chapter 5 verse 6. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. He comes back to this keyword, righteousness, that I want to talk with you about this morning. In the last of these statements or the second to the last of these statements, verse 10 says this, "Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs." What in the world is Jesus talking about? This morning when I woke up, I had a text from a family member.

I looked at the time stamp on the text, and for some unknown reason, one of my siblings sent me a text at 11: 7:48

35 last night. I'll probably spend some time chasing down the reason for this text, but the text was a quote. Here's the quote from my sibling. We all have the same God. We just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans, all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth expressed in different ways, forms, and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children. You may recognize those words. That's actually a quote from a book called The Life of a Butterfly, the memoir of a guy named Muhammad Ali. I don't know if you agree with those words or not, but I do know what Jesus said. In Jesus' recollection, John 14, he said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. In the days after that first Easter, recorded for us in Acts chapter 4, the early church preached that there is no other name other than Jesus by which we can be saved. Jesus, a little bit later on after what he just said that I read to you, a little bit later in the 20th verse of this same chapter, Jesus says to his audience on that day, aside the lake of Galilee. He said, I tell you the truth, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of God. I don't think that all roads lead to God. I think Jesus was serious when he was telling us that he was the exclusive way. But he tells us about this hunger and this thirst. Let's talk about some of these words before we dive further in. The word blessed obviously means joyful, favored, fortunate, privileged. The word hunger, thirst, well, that's probably what's stirring in your stomach and in your mouth right now. You're wondering how long will it be before I can get back to my coffee or on to my soda over for lunch. We know what a hunger and a thirst is. It's a recurring craving, what we generally refer to as appetite. And obviously the most important word here is righteousness. I want to reflect on that word particularly with you for a few minutes and about how Jesus describes it as a craving of his people. This word broadly means properly related or properly aligned to everything. Properly aligned and related to God, properly aligned and related to other people, properly aligned and related to everything that is in the universe. That's what the word righteousness means. Let's see if we can swim around in that. If I was going to put these ideas into my own words, this would be the Terman unauthorized translation. All right? It would go something like this. Fortunate are those who crave righteousness and are attacked for it. Their craving will be met and God's kingdom will be theirs. How does this righteousness craving get satisfied? Jesus helps us to understand how we should position ourselves for that, because really in many ways at the depth of our souls, every human being is longing for this, or they should be. The first thing that Jesus tells us about this righteous craving is that you and I need to confess our lack of righteousness. That everything about a life with God begins at the moment of humility before him. The Bible says in Ephesians 2 that because of sin, every one of us is dead toward God. The only people that don't have appetite and hunger and thirst are dead people. And Jesus says that sin has killed our appetite for this righteousness, this rightness with God and others and everything else. It's killed it off better than any any semiglutide or GLP-1 medication that you can talk about today. Sin has destroyed this appetite for righteousness in us. And Jesus came to restore it. He came to rebuild this hunger and thirst in you and in me. That is the message of Easter that we will celebrate. Because the first thing that you and I need to remember about righteousness is that it is first received as a gift before it is ever achieved as a reality of our effort. The Bible makes it clear that none of us is righteous, not a single one when we stand before God in compared to his holiness and his perfection. And that the only way that we ever have an appetite for righteousness is when we humble ourselves before God, when we trust in the mission and ministry of Jesus on the cross. When we allow him to bring his righteousness to us because of his mercy and grace. This word righteousness at at its most fundamental level is a legal term. It is what they call a forensic term, something that would be talked about in a court of law. It means to be made right or to even be acquitted, to be reconciled. It can also be used in an accounting kind of way as an an accountant reconciles the books of a person or a business. That's why in the earliest pages of scripture, when God tabs a man by the name of Abram on the shoulder, and says, follow me, trust me, and I will make you into a great nation. It says in Genesis 15 that when Abraham responded with humility and trust, that the Lord credited him this faith as righteousness. That exact same statement gets repeated in the largest book about righteousness in the Bible called the letter to the Romans. The word righteousness in that letter is used 30 different times. Paul uses the example of Abraham as the father of faith and says, if we will learn from his example, if we will trust God in humble faith, God will credit Jesus and his act on the cross as our righteousness, reconciling us, making us right with God. In a loving relationship based in mercy and grace that we could never achieve on our own. That's why one of my favorite verses comes out of 2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21, talking about this incredible gift of God for people who need righteousness that they can't achieve on their own. In that verse, God wrote these words, God made Jesus who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. That is the mission and the message of Jesus at Easter and every other day. That's why many of us love what Ephesians chapter 2 tells us when it says, for you are saved by grace through faith, and this not of yourselves. It is not from works that no one can boast, it is the gift of God. So what's the response to this first kind of righteousness? Hopefully for you it's humility. It's faith. It's confession that you can never be right with God except from God giving you that gift. That can never be that you would earn your way into right standing with this perfect and holy God. But that you would understand his gift in Jesus, the gift of mercy, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of reconciliation, the gift of righteousness. That's where the satisfaction of your hunger begins. The second aspect of righteousness is that it it needs to become a commitment that we pursue. That it it is a longing and a thirst for more and more of the character of Christ. What is sometimes called the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. That when you taste the righteousness of God, the holiness of Jesus, when you taste it, you just want more of it. Do you have something like that in your life? I mean, milk chocolate is like that for me. This little box has been that for me. This is the time of year when those wonderful little girl called Girl Scouts start selling these at the entrance to the grocery store and sometimes door to door. I'm enormously blessed that one of my colleagues has a little girl in her her care, and this little girl is trying to sell hundreds if not thousands of these little boxes. This is the last of the four boxes I would allow myself to buy. Because you know what happens when you open this box or its sister box called Thin Mints? As soon as you eat one, you have a craving for ten. I could have wiped out an entire box at any sitting at any moment. Because whatever they put in this box makes you crave more every time you open the box. Do you know that that is in a way exactly the way the righteousness of Jesus can work in your life? That once you have believed in Jesus, once you have received the gift of perfect standing with God, not based on your performance, but based on what Jesus did for us. That when you've tasted that, it starts to grow in you a hunger and a thirst for more and more and more, knowing that God has intended that you would become like Jesus in your character. As Romans chapter eight tells us, that we would fall in love with all of the things that God loves. All of those things that we call virtuous and good, and right, and true, and beautiful. And that from the moment that we receive that righteousness of being in right relationship with God, we want more of that kind of beauty in our lives. It's what the Bible talks about when it says in Philippians that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. That is, we are to partner with God daily to work out what he has already worked in us when we received righteousness. For it is God who is at work, the Bible tells us, working both to will and to do his good purpose. This was again the testimony of the apostle Paul. He was writing to his friends in Philippi about this journey and this hunger that God was growing in him, this appetite for righteousness. He says to them, not that I have already reached the goal or have received all of this experience of the character of Christ, but he says, I make every effort to take hold of it because I have also been taken hold of by Christ. I was taken taken hold of by what's in this box, and then I wanted to take hold of more of it. Paul is saying. He says, brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do. Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward for what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus. He's talking about his appetite for more and more of the righteous character of Christ in his soul. You know, it's a big year for us at my house. Judy and I met at the end of my high school years, and we dated for about six weeks, but we spread it out over five years. Okay? We can explain that to you over coffee if you want. But we got married in 1986 and this is 2026, so this will be our 40th year. I don't know if you're married, I don't know what you desire about marriage, but I can tell you this. Marriage has changed my life in a lot of ways. One of the ways it changed my life is it changed my appetite. When I met Judy, I preferred drinking regular Coke in a glass bottle. And over a period of time, because of her influence, the only kind of Coke I drink now is Diet Coke. When I married Judy, the only green thing I ate was an occasional serving of green beans that my mother added to my plate. We didn't eat any green things. I never ate a single bit, not one leaf of salad until I met Judy. And these days, at least once a week, I make sure that I go to Jason's Deli and just order the salad bar. This is what marriage can do to you. I'm just warning you if you're not married. And I eat, I eat what what God grows out of the ground as his own version of cardboard. It's called cauliflower. I mean, if it weren't for salad dressing, why would anybody bother with cauliflower? Amen. That's that's the influence of this woman and this institution called marriage in my life. I have acquired a taste for things that my mother raising eight kids was just too busy and too exhausted to worry about when the seventh child came along. Her job was just to keep me alive. And she did that with fried chicken and with chicken fried steak, and you know, it wasn't a bad life at all. Once you become a follower of Christ, and you taste the righteousness and love and goodness of God, you want more of it, but it is also a growing, acquired appetite. So if you don't have it all in your grasp yet, you're in good company. You're just like the apostle Paul who said, I've not gotten there fully yet, but notice what he says. He says, this one thing I do, which is really different from you and I who would say, well, there's about 12 things that we dabble in. Paul says, this one thing I do, I make it my aim to pursue this savior and to ask him to develop this appetite for more and more of his righteousness in me. The last thing that we learn about righteousness from Jesus's perspective is that it becomes a compassion that we share for the world. That little phone in your pocket or purse today is an amazing tool. Is it not? It can take you all around the world in so many amazing ways. It'll plan your next vacation. It can do incredible things. But you ever notice how that little device in your wallet or in your purse or in your hand can go off and it can be like a lightning bolt that hits you. That can be an alarm clock in the morning. It can be what's called an Amber Alert while you're sitting in a movie theater. How have they figured out that when they're going to issue an Amber alert, they're going to make it louder than anything you've ever heard in your life? My question to you is, when that alarm goes off, what is the reaction of your heart? Every time it goes off, we know immediately what it is, do we not? We know that something really bad and scary could potentially be happening to a family and to a child under the age of 18. I've gotten to the point of my life where every time that alarm goes off, it is like a lightning bolt. And I want to change the settings on my phone to where I don't receive them. But I'm convinced that God wants me to be hit by that lightning bolt. Whether it is that, or the suffering of people in war zones like Ukraine or Iran. I had a wonderful conversation with a man who was raised in Iran in the 60s and 70s. He left in 1977 to come to the United States under a previous regime to be educated, and he has never been able to return to his homeland. I'm convinced that part of the thirst and hunger and appetite for righteousness is not just that it would be personal, but that it would be communal. That we would have the heart of Jesus to weep for people whose lives are broken in all kinds of ways. Some of which we have tasted and much of which we have not, because we have been blessed and privileged and honored to be protected and shielded by God's goodness and grace. How can we begin to see ourselves more and more of people who long for a righteousness for everyone? A right standing with God, a right standing with people, and a right standing with everything in the world. Jesus said that you would, yes, probably incur some persecution, some mockery, some even attacks for this. Paul would be inspired to write about it in his letter. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 9. He says that we are like clay pots, and we are always carrying around in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that the the resurrection of Jesus would come through. Are you willing today to pray a dangerous prayer? To not only pray the sinner's prayer, "Lord, I have no righteousness on my own, would you give me the righteousness that comes from Christ because of his death on the cross?" Would you pray the prayer, "Lord, would you give me a growing appetite, a hunger and a thirst, and a constant recurring craving for more of the character of Christ in my own life?" But would you go one step further and say, God, would you break my heart for what is breaking yours globally today? And would you show me how to not only pray for that, but to be a part of the solutions that you are orchestrating even today? That could be developing a prayer list for people, for countries, for leaders all around the world. That could be giving some of your resources to good and godly ministries that are making a difference locally and regionally and globally. That could be as simple as calling someone today that is on the chapel's prayer list or on your personal prayer list and saying, how are you and how can I be praying more specifically for you today? It could be volunteering your your time somewhere around this community or in the other places where you live when you're not here. And saying, God, where do you want me to be a part of what you're doing? Maybe it's in a food pantry or a clothing shelter or serving as a volunteer at the hospital or any number of other places where God might want you to be a part of his kingdom agenda, sharing his righteousness with the whole world that needs it. When I read this passage, I have one other question that comes up. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. The question that comes to my mind is when? When. Just like some of you are thinking, when do I get to eat next? Well, God has a perfect sense of timing. And he knows just exactly how much you need today to satisfy this craving. And the word filled here means to be filled to the top, filled to the brim, filled to the place of overflowing. God knows exactly how much you need of anything and everything at any given moment. And if we will pursue him, call on him, trust in him, ask him, he will satisfy this longing in us every day. Let's pray together. Jesus, thank you for what you did for us on the cross and through the resurrection. Lord, it is true, whether we admit it personally or not, that none of us has any righteousness in and of ourselves. That we only receive righteousness first and foremost from you. And I pray this morning, God, there might be somebody in this room who came here today with maybe some thought of you or maybe none at all. But Lord, they need your forgiveness. They need to be made right with you by confession, by faith, by admitting to you that they haven't known you, or they haven't followed you. Lord, maybe in these quiet moments as we've been talking, maybe later on today, an hour or two from now, your spirit would stir in them. We would pray for that. And that God, if they need for the first time to confess their sin to you and ask because of Jesus and his work on the cross for your forgiveness and righteousness, God, that that would be the first step that they would take, and this would be the day of their salvation and of their righteousness coming from you. Lord, perhaps most of us in this room fall a little bit more into the other categories of needing more of an appetite for growing righteousness and for a willingness to share and pursue righteousness for others. God, that seems overwhelming to us at times. What does it mean for us today, this week, to work out the salvation and righteousness that you've given us, so it becomes more real, more visible, more tangible. And how can we share that blessing with people around us? God, show us the way even today. In Jesus name we pray. And everyone said together? Amen. Sheila, where are we going to lunch?