Hunger and Thirst

The title of today's sermon is Hunger and Thirst, Part 1. Hunger and Thirst, Part 1. It's a very good day to have this since we have the potluck here. And as you can tell, none of us are very skinny here. And so we do know what it is to hunger, and we do know what it is to eat. And so for those who are joining us, please join us for the wonderful food afterwards. We will just have a short 10-minute break after this sermon. We'll go into an interactive Bible study, and then you can feast on this wonderful food sitting in the back. So, Hunger and Thirst, D.L. Moody said the Bible was not given to increase our knowledge, but to change our lives.

Does it do that for you? Has the Bible changed your life? I see people going, yes. Yes, hopefully it does. I guess that's not the question. I guess the question would be, has it changed it enough? Do you need more? I find out I need more. The more I study the Bible, the more I find out I need to study the Bible, because it just constantly, as we're reminded, it's a living Word, and it seems to take on a life of its own, many times for all of us. I'd like you to turn with me today, if you will, I'll be reading from the New King James version, Matthew. You may have guessed that. Matthew 5. Well, look at verses 3 through 10. This was the start of the greatest sermon ever given, the Sermon on the Mount, and he started with the Beatitudes. If you ever wondered what that is, that's an attitude you need to have.

We all need an attitude adjustment, Maria. Yes, at times, my Father taught me that long ago. Both my Fathers, my spiritual and my physical. Father, let's go there. Matthew 5, verse 3, 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. That sounds good, doesn't it? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall hopefully obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The Beatitudes have been structured in many ways. Many sermons I've given a dozen different sermons on the Beatitudes, but I like it because I can look at the Beatitudes, I can look at those eight promises of God, because they are promises, aren't they? If you do this, you're going to get this. That's pretty good. But they also show the physical to spiritual progression, hopefully in our lives. Because as we just start out, we realize just how poor in spirit we are.

I had a woman this week that I was meeting and talking to. This is all new to her, and she realized, well, I don't know much of the Bible, but aren't we all that way? And sometimes, as I tell people, you don't realize how much you know, how much you've gathered over these years, until you start talking and explaining. And you can see how powerful that is. I also have looked at it, and my father, physical father, introduced this to me many years ago, as he looked at that as he did the Holy Days. Because he was in construction all those years, he looked at it like a ladder, and there are steps. And each Holy Day took him closer to the kingdom of God. Each of these Beatitudes, these eight steps, if you were to look at it on a ladder, they helped take us to the kingdom of God. They helped us come to the point where we realized that we need more growth. We need sometimes stronger spiritual legs, don't we?

But I bring this point out, because most of you, as many of you were saying the attitudes as I was giving them, most of you already know those. You've heard them.

But I want to bring a point from 40 years of experience that most people never get past number four. Most people in reality, whether I'm counseling or whether I'm working with someone or whether I've worked with somebody in the past, this always seems to be a big step.

Going from blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. That's a big step, do we? Do we? That's why I give these series here about hunger and thirst, because after 40 years, I still need to hunger and thirst. And there are still areas I need to grow in, and I want the reminder. And thankfully, I have God's Word to give me a reminder. Let's go back and look at Matthew 5 and verse 6. In the New King James Version, it says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Which begs the question, are you filled? Are you filled?

If you really drill down into your spiritual lives, are you filled as you need to be filled?

Are you full?

I'm sure some of us after the potluck today, after seeing some of the food, will feel very filled. I'm full! Can't eat anymore! But then there's some of us who can eat a little more. So, are you willing to dig down and ask those questions? Because it's a personal question for each one of us. Because only you know how if I feel filled. You can't know. Mary doesn't know. She lives with me. She knows when I'm full, eating physical food. But each one of us has to look to God and answer that question. Because a lot of us can look very filled from the outside. But maybe not as filled inside. And spiritually. Let me put it another way.

And I love the different translations because they help open a scripture up to me. That's why sometimes I don't use a lot of scriptures because everyone that I see is so deep. It's so big. If that's God, tell him I'm giving a sermon. Put him on hold.

I don't have time. I'll get to him after services.

I'd like to go in Matthew 5, verse 6, to the CEV. CEV verse. Contemporary English verse. It says, God blesses those people who want to obey Him more than what? Eat or drink. What?

Have you ever had that? Who you want to obey God more than to eat or drink? Have you ever fasted or gone without food for a day? A day and a half? Maybe even two days? And then you're sitting there and you're hungry and you're just like, oh wow. And you're just about to eat. And just as you're put to the mouth, you fall asleep. But have we ever fallen asleep during Bible study or prayer or meditation?

More than to eat or drink.

The good news translation says, Happy is he who hungers and thirst. Happy. As a matter of fact, the old English version in the old English, when this was first translated, it didn't say blessed. It said happy because that's the word that they translated. For blessed was happy. Happy. How is your happiness gauge? How high is it? Happy? It says you are if you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Because we both look at it. We've all come from the same place.

There's first our calling. And we are called by God. We did just pick up the phone book and go, that's the church. That's it right there. But God begins to work with us. He begins to call us at all ages. We look back now. We may be like an old man like I am and look back even 40 or 50 years ago and realize God was calling me before I even thought He was calling me. We see different things in our lives as He's working with us. So age is no big deal to God. Of course not. He doesn't even know what it is. He's eternal. There's no idea. But first you have your calling and then the second phase we are in now. You walk. The walk. This way of life. So I asked you this afternoon, you walk. Is it out of obligation? Is it out of duty? Well, yeah, I know I need to show up on the Sabbath day. All right, let's go. It's my duty. It's my obligation. It's what I'm supposed to do, right? When did it or does it start to be your desire? Is it your passion? Is it your love? Is it your lust? The hunger and thirst. Or do you just start out as, well, really it's a discipline. You think God wants it to just be a discipline? No! Christ said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. It needs to be a passion. It needs to be something that we really wrap our hearts around.

But there is an interesting story that I think we can all relate to. No matter who we are, we can go back 35, 100 years and read a story. And I think we can all relate to this because we find somebody in the Bible a lot like us. All right, let me put it this way. A lot like me. A lot like me.

Let's go back, if you will, to Genesis. Genesis 28. Back to Genesis 28. Here's the story of Jacob. Now we all know Jacob. We know what he did. We know how he supplanted his brother, how he was what you might say, devious. Not just a supplanter, but devious because he had his heart set on things and he made things happen. And you can read the story. Most of you know it. You read the story and he comes up to where his brother doesn't like him very much. After being tricked, as he was a trickster, Jacob and his brother Esau, Esau gets married. He's 40 years old. He gets married and didn't marry the kind of women. He just married one, he married two. Didn't marry the kind of women that his parents wanted to marry. So they were not too happy with him. But then you see when that happens, then there's a story, a continuing story that happens for a long time. And most people do not realize that. We're going to have a Bible study somewhere down the road on this. So if you have questions on it, we'll go there and I can prove my point. But you see a story now that Esau says, Dad's getting old, and Dad's getting old as soon as he's gone. Jacob, I'm going to kill you.

And you know what? Jacob believed him. And God also had a hand in this because God had to, I think there's a term now for getting kids out of the household, failure to launch, where kids want to stay in the house. They're 30, 40 years old, you can't get them out. Well, this is what Isaac and Rebecca had with Jacob. It's a failure to launch. You couldn't get him out of the house. He's 76 years old. He's still living at home. And they're saying, well, so Esau just said, Dad's gotten older, so guess what? So Rebecca believed him, and she said, you need to hit the road. You need to go up to where my family's from, where your uncle, your first cousins are. Go up there. Start a life. And really and truly, he didn't need to start a life.

Because before that time, you really don't see a relationship that Jacob has with God.

Jacob's only good relationship he had was with Mama, being a Mama's boy, and being all about Jacob. Selfish. What I want was best for me. And so then he hits the road, heads to Huron.

But let's look at this. Genesis 28.

Genesis 28 and verse 12. Verse 12. So as he stops there, because it's a pretty good distance from that place, it's estimated about 150 miles from where he is here. Where he stops is where Bethel would become. So he stops at Bethel, he's still got 150 miles to go. But in verse 12, he said, Then Jacob dreamed, and behold a ladder was set up on the earth, and its top reached into the heaven, and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, your Father, and the God of Jacob. The land of which you lie I will give to you and your descendants. Also your descendants shall be as a dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, and in you and in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you. Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, surely a Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? Oh, except there are some issues here. It is not out of passion, but it is more out of, huh, obligation. So you're going to give me this. All right? Sounds good, but I've got to do some things for you.

So let's go down to verse 20. He said, then Jacob made a vow, saying, if God will be with me and keep me in this way that I am going and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God.

Whoo! Oh, that's a conditional man, huh, Bill? That is like, oh, okay.

Verse 22, And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God's house, and all that you give me I will surely give a tenth to you.

Batteries out.

So no matter how long I yield, who was it going to help?

We'll have this 20-second commercial break.

As we think about Jacob and his new declared God.

That's unconditional, that's for sure.

Things that get on now.

Okay, so he said, I will give a tenth to you.

Isn't that sweet? He'd give a tenth. Things are tied up in me somewhere.

Well, let's get this on.

I will give you a tenth to you. So here God said what? I'm going to give you everything you need. And Jacob says, okay, I'm going to give you ten percent on.

If you...

Oh, I had to turn it on.

I thought I wasn't coming across. Well, I guess I am now.

So if you were God, because quite a few of his people have negotiated with him, you're looking at one.

Usually, immature Christians negotiate.

I was.

Oh, if I just get out of this.

But there are stages of conversion from the calling to the walk. There's a lot of space.

A lot of stuff can happen. And then from where we are now to the glorified state that he promises, there's some things there too. It takes some time. Well, Jacob was about to find this out the hard way.

Let's follow this story in Huron. Let's go to chapter 29.

He finally meets up with his uncle, and his uncle gives him a job. And his uncle happens to have some girls in the house for his cousins. But this is like Kentucky or Alabama, Tennessee, I guess.

Because they didn't really worry about this. Hey, it's family. But he comes up there, and so let's go to chapter 29 and verse 15. Then Laban said to Jacob, Because you are my relative, should you serve me for nothing? Tell me, what should your wages be?

Now Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Laa, and the name of the younger was Rachel. And Laa was delicate. If you look at all the different translations, she had a weakness of the eyes. Maybe she was farsighted, nearsighted, no-sighted, whatever. She just threw, you know. And she wasn't the most attractive girl.

But what happened?

But Rachel. Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

She was beautiful of form.

Yes, she was, as they would say in the South, a bodacious looking woman.

She was wow! She walked in, three people knew she'd walked by. But she was not on beautiful form, but also it says of appearance. I mean, she had the hair, she had the look, she had it all. And Jacob was like, oh yeah. So here's what I want. Now, Jacob loved Rachel.

And he said, I will serve you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter.

Contract should have been specific and clear, right? Man, I want this. And Laban said, it's better that I give to you than I should give it to another man. Stay with me.

So the deal was struck. So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they, and I love this one, and they what? They seemed but a few days to him because of the love that he had for her. Seven years he would walk around. Oh, she would get up in the morning. Oh, she walked by. Oh, wow. This is six more years. That's all. Like yesterday. Three more years.

That one's mine.

Get up every morning.

Another year, that's it.

And then the day came.

And what did he say?

Well, he says here, give me my wife. Wait long enough. Man's got to know his limitations dirty here. He says, seven years. Okay. But it seemed like a day he was so in love with her. He just like, oh, she could do no wrong. If she picked her nose, he was probably going how beautiful that is.

This is what it's showing here. And so what happens then? He gets cheated out.

There is a feast.

He had a feast. And if you look at the Hebrew word, it means, Mista.

The Hebrew word, Mista, it was a feast of booze. And so Laban got him pretty sauced.

Pass sauced.

Because this is what you've been looking for.

Seven years. Here it is. Here it is.

And he goes. And he staggers in to the tent. And he wakes up the next morning. And he's like, oh, wow.

He's like, oh, what the?

It's Leia.

And like the old Gomer Piles show, surprise, surprise, surprise. He'd been tricked. He'd been tricked.

But here you see the difference. And I bring that story out because of the beauty of it.

Beauty of it is he so loved Rachel. And now he's married to both.

And he doesn't have any real love towards Leia.

But he has passion towards Rachel.

And he's like, oh, brother, is our love, is our hunger and thirst for God a Rachel or a Leia?

See, Jacob was obligated. He was married to Leia.

But his passion and love was for Rachel.

Except who was the first one that gave him a child? And the next one. And the next one.

And he gives us a chance to look at ourselves.

Do we have a Rachel kind of love towards God? Or is it one of obligation and duty that it was to Leia?

I mean, you can answer that.

Matthew 5 and verse 6, the Oxford version says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for they shall be satisfied.

Are you satisfied? Are you satisfied with your relationship with God? Are you satisfied where you are in that relationship with God?

You live in third world, different parts of third world. We were just blessed to have our deacon from Haiti with us for four days this week.

And brought us stories and tales and so forth of Haiti.

And if you live in certain third world countries like Haiti, you know what it is to hunger and thirst.

Usually one day, one meal a day is what they plan on.

They happen to stumble across something else that's good. But they've learned to live with one meal a day. They know what it is to hunger and thirst in this country, do we?

It's amazing because sometimes Mary and I have been in Caribbean, of course you've been to Jamaica and you've been to these various places many of you have. And you go to a little grocery store and just like, there's cereal, one kind of cereal.

There is no Publix. There is no place where you win Dixie, where you can go in and find all this stuff. Well, now I think I'll choose this brand, I this brand. It's not that way.

At the time of Christ, people knew what it was to hunger and thirst.

Another few years ago, the story of a woman sailing through the Caribbean.

On a sailboat. She got too far away.

And she, one of her sails, read or broke in a strong storm. So she was stranded out there, just knew somebody would be coming by.

They didn't. Day after day after day.

Until finally, she resorted to having to drink her own urine because all the water was gone. And mind you, of what? Collarage. Collarage in the rhyme of the ancient maren, where he said, water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

She knew what it was to thirst.

Perhaps you do, too. I love this old Stroh's beer commercial. It's one of my favorite ones. I looked it up, couldn't find it. There are all kinds of Stroh's beer commercials on there, but couldn't find this one. As a matter of fact, people wrote in and said, where is that one commercial? It was a commercial for Stroh's beer. And so it shows this guy going through the desert. First, he's got a jacket like mine on, and then he's taking it off, and he's going through. The sun's just beating down. It's such impressive heat. He's walking in the desert. He's just going over this hill, over this other one. Pretty soon, you can see, he just sweated everything out. All of a sudden, he runs across this old prospector.

He's got this old donkey.

He looks down and he says, are you okay? And he goes, would you like something? He goes, yeah, you wouldn't happen to have a Stroh's beer, would you? He goes, no, but I got this nice, cool, clean water.

He goes, no, I really had my heart set on a Stroh's, and he gets up and he walks on.

Now, see, they make light of that, but hunger and thirst? Have you ever been that thirsty?

Matthew 5 and verse 6, contemporary English version. God blesses those people who want to obey him more than to eat and drink.

Remember that.

What do they want? They want.

They want. Look at that word, want. Do we want?

God enough. They want him in every part of our life. In the New King James Version, the Greek tense for hunger and thirst is the word continuous craving. Do you have a continuous craving? Do you have a constant craving for God's will in your life?

For God's word? For God's instructions?

I never got this song out of my mind when I first heard it, because it has this incredible 16-bar intro. So we're going to play just a portion of that song here now by Katie Lang called Constant Craving.

Excellent.

Constant craving. Do we have it?

She writes in there, There may be a great magnet that pulls all souls to all truth. She doesn't know, but we do. We know who that magnet is. We know what gives us this constant craving, or it should, that hunger and thirst. Luke 6, verse 21, from the New King James Version. I love this. Blessed are you who hunger now.

Blessed are you who hunger now. Do we? Is it for us now? Or do we say, well, wait till I get a little bit older. Get a little closer to the graveyard. Blessed are those who hunger now. Do we want God now? Are we kind of like Jacob back then? Well, I want him at 10 percent, not the 100 percent. Sir Ernest Shackleton. Sir Ernest Shackleton, in 1915, wanted to be an adventurer and explorer, and he wanted to be the first man to ever go to the Antarctica, the South Pole.

And he wanted to get there. And so he took this group of men and four ponies and he headed out, and he traveled 1,700 miles through this desolate, cold, freezing landscape. And he realized they ate all their food. And they were going to have very little left. And he came within 97 miles of the South Pole after traveling 1,700 miles with his group, and he couldn't make it. He was going to have to turn back, and they did. And then they didn't know if they would still make it. And they traveled 127 days. They finished up eating the ponies because it was the only food.

And then they went days and days and days without eating as they were marching through, trying to get back to their ship. His journal said, we had days of no food, not even a morsel of food, just water. Every waking hour was occupied with thoughts of eating. We had dreams of past meals. We talked about, we became obsessed with food. Hunger and thirst. Brethren, I ask you the question, if you go two days without Bible study, are you hungry?

If you go two days without prayer, isn't it an obsession? Do you miss it? Do you miss it so much that you miss it like food and water? Is it our passion? Or is it just something that we do? Brethren, do we hunger? Really hunger and thirst? No, really thirst for God as a dying man. Thirst for water.

If we hunger and thirst for water, we will look at this and our mouth will water. We'll desire it so much we can't think of anything else. This is what God wants us to do with His truth. He wants us to hunger and thirst. But do we want it? That's the thing. He can't make us, right? He can't make us. He doesn't want to have to make us, does He? He wants us. That's why He gave us a part of Himself through His Holy Spirit so that we could have that first inkling to hunger and to thirst for Him. Like a part of us is missing. Remember when I was dating Mary and she was in Alabama and I was in Tennessee and we just see each other every other weekend and it was just like, oh those days went so slow.

And it's that hunger, it's that wanting, it's that passion, it's that love. And God equates us the love for Him the same way. Because you know what He says in the Bible? God loves us with all His heart, His soul, His mind, and His being, and He just asks us to do the same. He loves us that much.

He was willing to do anything and, as we saw from Passover, everything for us. So God wants us to hunger and thirst every day. He tells us that in the greatest sermon ever given. Our Savior gave us a mandate, a mandate to hunger and thirst. Brethren, will we do it? Will I do it?

Every day? As the Scripture says, will I do it now? Because that's what God wants from us. It's what He wanted from Jacob. And it's amazing that Jacob learned a lesson so much that at the end, who was he buried with? Leah. Who did he spend all of most of his time with? Leah. Who did he have the most kids with? Leah. I think that developed such a love for her and appreciation. As we grow older with God, will we have that same appreciation?

Can we get it? The fourth and most difficult step to the Kingdom of God is blessed are those who hunger and thirst. If it's that latter, that fourth step is higher. Jeff Newell can tell you from being building inspector. And if you've ever gone to the Caribbean, you've gone to other countries, you've gone to Italy, you've got...the steps aren't the same. No, I'm not even close. That's why we have building codes here. Because you may have one...yeah, and then you're doing...this is a taller step, brother. It is a big one that we need to practice for. Let us take that giant step. Let us be filled. Let us be satisfied. Let us, brethren, hunger and thirst.