Today we continue our study of the Lord's words in the next Beatitude in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 6. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 6. We come then to the fourth of the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." I just see Virginia's mother here, so I'd like to extend our greetings also to Virginia's mother. Matthew chapter 5 and verse 6. Blessed — happy, that is — are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Now what does this mean? The more I study the Lord's teaching and meditate upon it, I never cease to marvel at the depth and the richness of the Lord's words. How he is able to put so much into so few words. I trust I've expounded most parts of the Scriptures, but there is no one who speaks as the Lord Jesus speaks. No one who can put so much into so few words. There is nobody like him. It's just incredible. And the problem for the expositor is the problem of how to put across simply and plainly as he unfolds the riches of the Lord's teaching. How to put it all across simply and plainly.
Now what does this mean? Well, we generally again regard anyone who hungers and thirsts as not very fortunate. But the Lord Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." Let's consider some of the meaning that is in these words. The Lord Jesus compares righteousness to food. After all, you hunger and thirst for food. And food, of course, is essential to life. You hunger and thirst for that which you perceive, like food, to be essential to your life. It is not only desirable, it is essential. You do not hunger and thirst with that same intensity for something which does not stir your deepest desires. And one of the things that stirs our deepest desires is that which is life. After all, without life, you can't desire anything else. If you are dead, everything is gone. There's nothing left to desire. So life is the most fundamental thing we could desire. We hunger and thirst for food and for drink because without these things we die. The body hungers and thirsts because the body is thereby expressing its desperate need for these things. The longer you wait, the longer you don't have something to eat, the more hungry the stomach gets, the more thirsty you get, the more the body cries out in what is described as thirst for drink — because it's survival. The body's survival depends on it.
Now think carefully. The Lord Jesus is saying this: that righteousness is as vital to the spiritual life as food and drink is to the physical life. Now that's the first point that comes out to us very, very plainly. Isn't it? Now think well on this. Righteousness, the Lord Jesus is saying, is something so vital to your spiritual life that your spirit, if it knew what it needed, would be crying out, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Because without it, you cannot live. Without righteousness, you cannot live. So the comparison is between food and drink physically, on the physical level, to righteousness, which is both food and drink, on the spiritual level. Now that is quite easy to see. It takes no great depth of thinking to perceive that.
But let us take it from there. What happens when you take food? What happens when you take drink? And now, when you get food, what do you do? In order to fill your stomach, you stuff your food in your pocket, right? Say nonsense. You stuff it in your mouth, not in your pocket. I see. And so when you are thirsty, what do you do? Well, you pour it over your hair. Say ridiculous. In order to quench your thirst, you drink it in your mouth. Well, why do I say this? Because there is an astonishing lack of understanding of how important righteousness is to eternal life in the sense that it must be — and notice carefully — internalized. I use this word "internalized." Food does not feed you if you stick it in your pocket. That is externalized. But if you want to feed upon it, you must internalize it. That is, you've got to eat it. If you are thirsty, you do not pour the water over your hair. That is good for shampoo. But that does not quench your thirst. You have to drink it. You have to internalize it before that food is going to do anything to you.
Very simple to understand again. And yet, it is amazing how few people understand the things which are simple when it comes to spiritual things. They are very clever when it comes to material things. They know a lot of things about the material life. When it comes to spiritual life, they understand nothing. You see, what the Lord Jesus is saying is this: you must not only desire this righteousness, but you must take this righteousness and internalize it. Internalize means you must not only receive it, because if I give you a piece of bread when you are hungry and you stick it in your pocket, have you received it? Of course you have received it. But does it satisfy your hunger? Of course it hasn't satisfied your hunger. Because you have not yet internalized it.
Today we hear a lot about receiving Christ. But what good does receiving Christ do unless you internalize Christ? That's what the whole of John chapter 6 is about. "He that eats me, he who eats me, will live by me." The Lord Jesus is saying exactly the same thing. It's no use receiving Christ, whatever that means, without — unless you receive him into your innermost being, unless you internalize him.
Now think of righteousness. What happens again to the food when you eat? How does it satisfy your hunger? Because if you say you are very hungry, and so you decide that you are going to eat a mouthful of paper, and then you chew the paper, and you have good strong teeth, and you gulp it down, and your stomach is very full. Right? Your hunger is gone because your stomach is now full of paper. What happens? You starve to death anyway. Say, how come? Because it happens that paper does not nourish your body. It can fill your stomach, but it does not nourish your body. It has to be absorbed before it's going to nourish the body. Just filling the stomach is not going to satisfy your needs.
I heard of some queer fellow who makes it his business to eat everything, including cars, and bicycles, and glass. He eats the car entire. That includes the glass, the rubber tires, everything. Now how this fellow doesn't manage to die of lead poisoning or some other poisoning, I don't understand. But he actually, day by day, eats a few screws, eats a few bolts, in order to prove a point that he can eat the whole car. Now I would much rather drive a car than eat it. Because I don't see what the point of eating the car is. Since a car does not happen to nourish my body, but much more likely is going to poison my body. What will happen to this fellow in a few years' time, I dare not think.
So, the body must be able to absorb this righteousness. Now what happens? Spiritually, when you eat righteousness, you don't just stuff it down your throat. Righteousness must be absorbed into the body. Now what happens when the food you eat is absorbed into the body? It becomes part of you. Your nutrients go into the blood, and through the blood it goes into your muscles, to your tissues, to your cells, and nourishes every part. In other words, the piece of food that you eat ceases to be a piece of food. It is broken down into its proteins, into carbohydrates, into its fats, and all that is then absorbed into all parts. It becomes part of you, in other words. Well, very easy to understand again.
Now take righteousness. What the Lord Jesus is saying is this: if you want to be saved, you don't just swallow righteousness and stick it in your stomach because that's not going to do anything to you. But what it has to do is it has to be internalized and absorbed so that it comes into every part of your being. It comes into every part of your life, into your fingertips, into your eyes. The nutrition that you had for lunch is going to be feeding your hair roots so that your hair can grow. It's going to feed the cells in your eyes. The cells in every part of your body is quickened and vitalized. So righteousness must now become vital to every part of your body, every part of your life.
Now, I am stressing this point because that's the Lord's teaching. But that, alas, is not the teaching that we find so often in the church today. Today we have a salvation that goes by some form of easy believism. All you do is believe and be saved, and this belief appears to be more or less intellectual in content: that you believe certain things happened at certain times in the past, and these things are historically true, and you believe them with all your heart. What has been internalized? Exactly what has been internalized? How does that feed the hungry soul? How does it bring life to the perishing? Do historical facts save us? Jesus said you have to feed on righteousness. You have to eat the righteousness in. Do historical facts save us? It will save us about as much as if I took the Encyclopedia Britannica and chewed the pages up. That doesn't feed my brain. It doesn't do anything for me. Historical facts are not the things that save us. It is the righteousness of God in Christ that is going to save us.
And today we have a teaching which says that God imputes his righteousness to us, whatever that means. He imputes it to us. He clothes us with it. Well, here the Lord Jesus is talking about food and drink. I mean, we are going to live by food and drink. I don't live simply by putting a garment over me. And so we speak of an externalizing of this righteousness. Strange. Of course there must be an internalizing and an externalizing. There must be both inward and outward righteousness. There must be a righteousness which is first within and then manifests itself outside for everyone to see, whereby this life becomes light. There must be an externalizing of it — light. "You are the light of the world." People can see it. But we don't put light on outside of us just like this. This light of Christ must come from within and shine outward if it's going to be genuine — a light which goes through and through us, not just shining from our skin. The whole problem of the old covenant was that the light was temporary and shining on Moses' face, on his skin. This light which is skin deep is not much good. It has to be a light which comes from the heart, from the innermost being. As the Lord Jesus says in John chapter 7, "Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water." This water comes out, but it starts from inside.
And here we have today a teaching of righteousness which is all outside. Nothing changes much inside. A righteousness is imputed to you. You are clothed by a righteousness, and we are told that when God looks at you, he cannot see what you really are. All he sees is the clothing of righteousness outside of you. What kind of God is this? He can't see past an outward shell of righteousness? Even if that righteousness is the righteousness of Christ and forms only an outward shell around us, that is called salvation? Now you can see how different is the Lord's teaching from the kind of teaching — superficiality. Today all Christianity is on the surface. Teaching is superficial, belief is superficial, and the whole Christian life is superficial. After all, it's all on the outside. It's imputed to us all outside. And when God looks at you, he can't see you, he sees Christ because you are hiding behind Christ. So you are the same rotten sinner that you were before, without change, you are still full of sin, but all that happens is that Christ envelops you round about like a cocoon, and so God can't see past this amazing cocoon, so he can't see all the sin that's hiding underneath it. What kind of teaching is this? Where in the Bible do you find this kind of teaching? I don't know. But you are very familiar, I'm sure, that if you have been a Christian for any number of years, you are very familiar with what I'm saying. And that's not imputed righteousness in the Bible sense at all.
This righteousness of God is given to us, not that we may just look at it, not that we may smear it upon our face so that our face looks a bit better than it looked before, not that we may put it outside of us so that we look a little cleaner when in fact underneath we are all very dirty. What kind of a God is this that is being preached? I mean, he would be doing better off in the fashion shows. I mean, you don't have to take a bath, just change your garment. Just see that your outside dress is clean, never mind how dirty inside is. No, no, this is not the teaching of the Lord Jesus at all.
Think again. As a person hungers for food, so blessed is the man who hungers for righteousness. As a person thirsts for drink, so blessed is the man who thirsts for righteousness. Because he wants to take it into himself. He wants to be nourished by it. He feeds upon it until his faint soul, his exhausted and wearied spirit is revived again and brought to life. So the Lord Jesus says, "He who eats me" — don't just put me on. Of course you can put him on too. But you must first and foremost eat me. "He that eats me will live by me." Now this is very important.
Now notice further the Lord's teaching. The problem with many people today is the problem of appetite. So there is righteousness, but do you have an appetite for righteousness? We now see that righteousness is as essential to our soul as food is to our body. I hope you understand this well. It is not believing a creed that is vital. Although believing the right things is important — no one will deny that it is important to believe the right things, as it is important to eat the right kind of food. As we saw, eating paper is not going to fill you. It's not going to meet your physical needs. But it is important also that we recognize that it is the righteousness which is the right food. And this food must be internalized.
Now you are in trouble, of course, if you are starving but you don't know it. You are not hungry. A sick person has no appetite. And lots of people are spiritually sick, so they have no appetite for righteousness. Just like a sick person who is really in body very much in need of nourishment, but because he is sick he has no appetite. He can't eat. I know that feeling very well. When I am sick I have no appetite at all. You can put a beautiful juicy steak in front of me and it does not cause my stomach to secrete any gastric juices at all. There is absolutely nothing to me because the person is sick.
And also there is, in terms of food, a kind of sickness which is not — you don't eat because you are also mentally sick. There is a kind of disease described as anorexia, which I am told is especially suffered by young teenage girls who want to get slim. After a time they discover that they completely lose their appetite. They can't eat at all. In fact they've got a kind of conditioned response that whenever they see food they want to throw up, they feel sick. And I saw the other day a girl writing to a newspaper columnist asking for help because she can't eat at all, and she is just wasting away, because she says she doesn't know how to overcome this apparently now conditioned reflex that whenever she sees food she feels sick. Now this can become a very serious condition in which a person quite literally starves to death.
Or there is the case of a person who also becomes mentally sick through being physically sick. And I was just recently also reading the case of a doctor's wife who, whenever she sees food, sees bugs crawling all over this food. Somehow every time she sees food, no matter how delicious that food is, she can only see — she visualizes — all kinds of bugs crawling around on it, and therefore she can't eat it. And so this doctor's wife was wasting away, and her husband the doctor didn't know how to treat her, didn't know what to do with her. So finally consulted another doctor who happened to specialize in psychiatric medicine. And he prescribed for her high doses of niacin. Niacin is a B vitamin, B3 as it's called. And he prescribed tremendously high doses of this B vitamin for this doctor's wife — in fact, to the level of 30,000 milligrams per day. So she was spending her whole time swallowing B vitamin tablets, 60 of them at 500 each, popping pills into her mouth to get 30,000 milligrams of it. And when she took the 30,000 milligrams of B3, she could look at food and didn't see any more bugs, and was able to eat normally. The strange thing is that when the dose of B vitamin was reduced to 26,000 milligrams, she saw the bugs again. But every time the B vitamin was raised above 26,000, the bugs disappeared. So you can see that there is this disease.
And I suspect that there are lots of Christians who need a lot of spiritual B vitamins. Whenever they see spiritual food, they must imagine bugs crawling around on it, or else they have a conditioned reflex that they feel pretty sick. Isn't it very interesting when some Christians do their Bible study, that as soon as they open their Bible they feel astonishingly tired. Suddenly they feel so exhausted that suddenly this blanket of exhaustion covers them the moment they open the Bible. But strangely enough, the moment the Bible closes, they feel very good again. Very puzzling. So either they see some sort of visualized bugs crawling over the Scripture, or they suffer some form of spiritual anorexia, or otherwise some kind of spiritual lack of appetite. Something is wrong, and we need this healing from the Lord.
So it is clear then that the person with good appetite, who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, is happy because he's a very healthy person. At least he doesn't suffer from some kind of B vitamin deficiency and other mental hallucinations and other problems with lack of appetite. He has a healthy appetite. That's very important.
So the third thing we need to ask is exactly how do we come to have a good appetite? Well, we see three things. First of all, of course, we need to be healed. That is very plain to us. If you don't have appetite, something is wrong with you. And it's time to ask, "Lord, what's wrong with me, that I don't have a love for righteousness? I have all kinds of mental problems when I see righteousness. Maybe like this doctor's wife, whenever you think of righteousness, you see bugs crawling around over it, and therefore immediately you lose your appetite for righteousness." You have a conditioned reflex like so many non-Christians — that righteousness frightens them and puts them off, but sin has a strange attraction, but righteousness holds no attraction for them. You need to be healed. You need to be restored again to life and health.
Well, the next thing to restoring your appetite and therefore your health is, in Scripture, what is described as fasting. Fasting is very good for working up an appetite. You don't believe it, try it sometimes. It's amazing what fasting will do for your appetite. Even though I normally have a relatively poor appetite, but when I fast it becomes a battle. The first day or two you can think of nothing but food. Food even in your dreams — you are dreaming that you are eating, and you wake up to find that you didn't eat anything. That's what fasting will do.
The Lord Jesus, we are told in Matthew chapter 4, verse 2, that he fasted 40 days and he was very hungry. Very hungry. Now how do you fast spiritually? Well, of course you can fast literally — it also does good to the soul. But how do you fast spiritually? Let us look at Isaiah chapter 58. Isaiah 58. And this is what Isaiah 58 tells us. Isaiah says, in chapter 58, verses 6 and 7 — this, well, earlier on in this chapter he compares the Jewish ceremonial fast. Notice the externalized fast, and we are talking about internalizing it, and here Isaiah is dealing with this very contrast of externalized fasting and internalized fasting.
And so the Jews have fasted. Now let's look at verse 3, for example, of Isaiah 58. "Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves?" The Jews are complaining to God. Of course the Jews are very good at complaining to God, like many Christians. They are experts at complaining. "We have been fasting and you didn't see it. Where have you been looking? You've been looking in the wrong direction. Don't you see us standing here fasting? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?" "Behold," in the day of your fast — and here is God's reply — "in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight." They got very bad tempered because they have low blood sugar, you see. You know that when your blood sugar is low, you don't have enough food, people get irritable and bad tempered. And so such was the superficiality of their fasting that because they were fasting they got ill-tempered, irritable — low blood sugar — and they quarrel and fight, "and to hit with wicked fists." They are punching each other. What kind of a fast is this? "Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high."
"Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a rush?" Rush, of course, is a plant. Here it's not rushing around. It has to do with a plant which is bowed down. "And to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?" You see, the Jews had externalized all their religion. And it is normal for human nature always to externalize everything, like the Pharisees. And today we have a Christianity, as we saw, which is externalized. It externalizes even grace. It's amazing. Man is so superficial that this wonderful truth of God's grace can be externalized so that it is imputed to you in a purely external application of grace. It's an insult to God's grace. And this is called the doctrine of salvation by grace? Well, that's not a biblical doctrine of salvation by grace — whereby grace is sort of painted to you externally, whereby it is all on the outside and very little if any on the inside, because it doesn't matter whether it's inside or not. You are saved by an externalized grace which is imputed to you. Incredible.
And though notice this: an external religion does nothing for you, even if it is a profession of grace. Verse 6: "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke?" — this yoke of oppression — "to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry?" Oh, that's a fast. Because you share your bread, you've got less to eat. "And bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh" when he is in need.
"Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily." We were talking about healing. Well, let the healing start with fasting. Very good way to get healed. In fact, many experts tell us that if you don't feel well, if you feel sick, if you have some kind of organic problem, one of the best ways to start the healing process is to fast. Very good way to start. I read a book called "The Miracle of Fasting." Very interesting book to read sometimes. He describes how he was extremely ill and how through a process of fasting he was healed. "Then your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am.'" Oh, that's a beautiful passage. When you internalize righteousness, then when you call, God answers. "Your righteousness shall go before you. Your light shall shine." This passage is very important because it's very close to the Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: "Let your light so shine before men." He's telling us here how that light will come about at all. It is through this hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
How do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Well, start with fasting. What is fasting? Fasting here is repentance from sin. It is turning away, breaking the bonds of unrighteousness, of wickedness. Now once you start doing that, you are well on the way to getting a spiritual appetite. But so long as you keep sin and unrighteousness in your heart, you are not going to have any appetite for righteousness.
The second thing is: once you begin, through your fasting, to get righteousness, to break with sin, and to hunger and thirst for righteousness, then you are going to start feeding upon righteousness. And once you feed upon righteousness, this righteousness goes through every part of your being, and you are well satisfied. Now should you sit back and be satisfied? No. You are fed with righteousness — what for? Just so that you can parade your righteousness in front of men? Most certainly not. It is in order that you may serve him, that you may live for him.
And there's something very interesting. How do you work up an appetite? Well, by working, by activity, by exercise. So having fasted, having turned away from sin, having broken the yoke of sin, don't stop there. Now being fed with righteousness, you go forth to serve, to serve the Lord. Because now this food nourishes you. You feel energetic. You feel energetic. You're ready to do something. That's wonderful. And you go forth and do something for the Lord. And what happens is this: the more you do for the Lord, you start feeling hungry again. You had a wonderful lunch, and then you went out and did some really active work, or you did some exercise, and what happens? You feel your hunger coming back again. That's healthy hunger. Your appetite is working now. And then you're going to feed on some more righteousness, and then you're going to do some more work. You're going to feel more energetic again.
Righteousness, once you feed upon it, like food, gives you spiritual vitality. Spiritual vitality, spiritual drive, spiritual energy. Look at the weak Christians today. Oh dear, a church full of lethargic, weak people who can't do anything. They have no energy. They are spiritually tired all the time. They are spiritually exhausted. They have no spiritual B vitamins. Oh, it's pitiful. Why? It's the whole vicious chain. There's no hunger, so there's no energy. There's no energy, so there's no movement. There's no movement, so there's no hunger. And so it goes on and on, and you're caught in this vicious circle. What we need today are people who have this dynamic power because righteousness inspires you.
You see the beauty of the Lord's teaching. Righteousness is that which gives you the energy — the righteousness which comes from God, which he gives to us. Notice: this is not a righteousness that you earn. It's given to you. And you internalize it, and then it inspires you. You understand Philippians chapter 2 and verse 12 very well: "It is God who inspires you, who is at work within you, to will and to do." That righteousness of God completely vitalizes your whole being. Oh, this is Christianity. This is New Testament Christianity. None of your sickly stuff that you have in the churches today too often. This is beautiful. Did I say the Lord's teaching is so deep? Isn't it amazing? He said only one sentence, and look at the riches that's coming out of it. It is so vital to every part.
So now notice the stages. This hunger results in, showing us, the result of a healing. A healing which leads to, and also results in, further repentance. And then, as a result, there is growth. And growth leads to maturity. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, for they shall be satisfied." Fully satisfied. Oh, that is wonderful.
But now let us press on. Notice now what happens. Is this hunger and thirst expresses what? Intensity. Intensity. You know, there is some great problem with Christians today, as I say, they are lethargic, and there is no enthusiasm, there is no intensity, there is no fire, there is no dynamism. They don't understand what Paul says in Romans chapter 12, verse 11: "Be on fire with the Spirit. Let your zeal never flag." Romans 12:11. Your zeal must never flag. Zeal is that inner fire which never grows dim, but aglow with the Spirit. You can't glow unless there is fire — the Spirit within you causing you to glow. This is Christianity indeed. You know, without enthusiasm — enthusiasm — zeal, that deep spiritual zeal, not the external running around of activity (again, externalizing zeal — we are good at externalizing everything) — but the deep inner zeal, the fire of God that consumes within, which is expressed in this hungering and thirsting.
Such a person is always zealous. When a person is hungry and thirsty, he will go to great lengths to get what he needs. He will march over deserts. He will walk everywhere looking for food and drink. He must get it. And once he gets it, he is again vitalized. He is energized! But what kind of Christian are you? Think well. Do you find the fire glowing within you? Sense intensity, zeal? Is that that kind of Christianity that you know?
Now notice the fourth thing. Fourth thing: continual eating. Notice this: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst." Unfortunately, as always, the English translation completely fails to express the tenses. The tense is lost. "Hunger and thirst" can be present tense in English, it's true. But the Greek is very specific: present continuous tense. A continual hungering and thirsting. This hungering and thirsting is not once and for all. It is a continual, ongoing hungering and thirsting. Is it ever satisfied? Yes, it is satisfied, but it comes back again. And it is with new hunger and new thirst. Why? You tasted and saw that God is good. And because you tasted and saw it is good, your appetite is coming on again. It is satisfied, and yet it wants more. The healthy person — oh, his appetite is good. But as your health declines, your appetite becomes poor.
This hungering and thirsting becomes a permanent feature of the Christian, because in a sense he is satisfied — in a sense, because he has tasted and seen that God is so good, he wants more. He wants more. And so he presses on, just like Paul, never satisfied. "Forgetting the things which are behind," Paul says in Philippians chapter 3, "I press on towards the mark. I forget the things which are behind — my past attainments, achievements spiritually — forget about it. Press on." He is never satisfied, that he may gain Christ. "Not as though I am already perfect, but I press towards the mark to gain Christ." Continuing hunger. So again the tense is amazing that the Lord Jesus used: "Blessed are those who constantly hunger and constantly thirst for righteousness." A person who is satisfied becomes complacent. In this sense, too satisfied.
# The Beatitudes: Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness (Part 2)
In this age, in this generation, never be satisfied. We cannot, in the nature of the case, be satisfied until that day that we fully gain Christ. That is, again, exactly what the Lord Jesus says in John chapter 6, verses 56 and 58, where he says, "He who eats me" — he who keeps on eating me — that's there again the same tense, present and continuous tense. In John chapter 6, verses 56 and 58, he who keeps on eating me will live by me. Again, we have a Christianity today which teaches a once-for-all thing. "Once you have Christ, you always have Christ. Once you are saved, you are always saved. Once you eat, you are always full." There is no such thing in the Lord's teaching. It is a continuing process. You don't just eat Jesus once and that's it. "I ate Jesus back in 1953, and I have been full ever since." That's the kind of Christianity we have today. Paul — the Lord Jesus says, you eat me and you keep on eating me, not only back in 1953 or 1973, but you keep on eating and eating and eating. And he who keeps on eating me will live by me. That is biblical teaching. You keep on internalizing Christ. Continuing process. Because of continuing appetite.
Let's move to the fifth and final point. Where to find this righteousness of God? Where to find it? Well, where can you find it? But in God himself. This righteousness cannot be obtained anywhere else. Can you tell me where you can get this righteousness, if it is not in God? This righteousness cannot be found anywhere else. It is the Lord who is our righteousness. This is well known even in the Old Testament. Jeremiah 23 and verse 6. In Jeremiah 33 and verse 16, for example, tells us, the Lord is our righteousness. That is not a new teaching in the New Testament, you know. It is not the New Testament that discovered that we don't earn our righteousness, that righteousness is from God. That is not the New Testament. It is back in the Old Testament. The Lord is our righteousness. It is throughout the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, they knew that too. Righteousness is from the Lord. He who hungers and thirsts, where can he find it? But it is in the Lord. There is nowhere else you can find it.
And when I look at the New Testament, I find something very interesting. In the New Testament too, the Lord Jesus, the Lord God is righteousness. For example, the Lord is righteous. The Lord Jesus says in John chapter 17, verse 25, as he prays to the Father, "Righteous Father." Where is the righteousness? It is in the righteous Father. He is our righteousness. And we find that a person who therefore hungers and thirsts for righteousness is a person who hungers and thirsts for God. Because he knows that his righteousness can only be found in God. And so he hungers and thirsts for God. In that beautiful passage that our brother Gerard just read just now, Psalm 63, verse 1 onwards, you saw the very thing — that hunger and thirst for God. In Psalm 42, verse 1, we find the same thing. And perhaps I'll just read Psalm 42, verse 1, since our brother Gerard already read Psalm 63. Psalm 42, verse 1 — one of the very beautiful passages in Scripture: "As the deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?" You see, the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is a person who hungers and thirsts for God.
Secondly, we find in the New Testament that Jesus is the righteous one. Jesus Christ the righteous. For if we hunger for God, how do we find God? Well, the Lord Jesus tells us, "No man comes to the Father but by me." The psalmist hungered and thirsted for God. "When shall I come before your face? When shall I see your face, O God? My soul thirsts and hungers for you." Well, how will we find God? Through Christ. "No man comes to the Father but by me." And Jesus is the righteous one. So it is this — that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those who hunger and thirst for Christ. 1 John chapter 2, verse 1 and verse 29, tells us Jesus Christ is the righteous one.
But there is more. In the New Testament too, we find that he who hungers and thirsts for God hungers and thirsts for his kingdom. That's the third thing we can see in the New Testament. First he hungers for God. Then he finds he hungers for Christ, because God is in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, as Paul tells us. Then he finds he hungers and thirsts for God's kingdom. Because Christ's kingdom — Christ's kingdom has to be in our lives. That is how Christ is going to be internalized. Through his kingdom, that is, through his reign, through his government in our lives. The word "kingdom of God" can be easily translated as "the government of God." The kingdom of God is righteousness, Paul tells us in Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. So the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness hungers and thirsts for God's kingdom. "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as in heaven." Now nobody prays that prayer unless he hungers and thirsts for God's kingdom. And you don't hunger and thirst for God's kingdom unless you hunger and thirst for righteousness, because his kingdom is righteousness, as we see in Romans.
But the next thing we see, the fourth thing we see, is that he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness will also hunger and thirst for the righteous. And the righteous in the New Testament, as in the Old Testament, refers also to the saints of God. When somebody says to me, "I believe in Christ. Why should I go to church?" I know this fellow is in trouble. This man is in big trouble. "Why should you go to church?" Because you hunger and thirst for God's people. The Old Testament already knew this, where the psalmist says that he delights in God's saints. He delights in Jerusalem, in Zion. "Zion is my glory and my delight." Why? If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will find that you hunger and thirst to be with God's people. You love his people, with all their faults. You still love them. Why? Because Christ is in them. And they are in Christ. How can you love Christ without loving his people? It doesn't work. That is what John says in his first letter. He says, "If you say you love God, but you hate your brother, you are a liar. And the truth is not in you." There is no truth in you at all. The man who says he loves Jesus will love those who love Jesus. It's inevitable. He who loves the Father also loves the Son. And that is the scriptural teaching, because the Son is like the Father and belongs to the Father. And so the righteous — that the disciples are called righteous — are found everywhere in the Old and New Testament. In the New Testament, in the Lord's teaching, in Matthew 25, and verse 46, for example. Just to quote one example. Or 1 Peter chapter 3, and verse 12. There again, the saints or Christians are called the righteous.
But the fifth point in this is: he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness hungers and thirsts for God's word. Oh yes, because God's word is called the word of righteousness. You see, when you say you hunger and thirst for righteousness, what are you hungering and thirsting for? Or something in the abstract? Where is the righteousness that you can hunger and thirst for? How do you eat it? So you can't even — you don't even know what it is. But now we find that righteousness in the Bible is concretely God himself, the Lord Jesus, the kingdom of God, the disciples of Christ, and his word. The word of God. The word of righteousness. Hebrews chapter 5, verse 13 tells us — Hebrews 5:13 tells us that the word of God is the word of righteousness. If you want to feed on righteousness, where are you going to find it? Right here in his word.
Have you ever noticed how Christians who are healthy have an enormous appetite for the word of God? They are never satisfied. Feed and feed. I am one of these gluttons. I am a glutton. I am never satisfied with feeding on the word of God. I feed and feed, and I am satisfied, yet I am always hungry. And I keep eating, and I still have a good appetite, and I keep feeding, and it goes on like this. It is incredible. When it comes to spiritual things, it is quite different from physical things. When you have a nice steak dinner, or you have a nice dinner in Chinatown, you are satisfied for the next few hours. In spiritual things, you know, because your appetite is limited by the volume of your stomach. You see. Your stomach stretches and stretches, and you stuff in the last piece of nice chicken, and it just can't go anymore. You see. Your appetite is still there, and sometimes it says your eye is bigger than your stomach. We say in Chinese, the eye is bigger than the stomach. Why? Because your eye is still looking at the food, but the stomach can't take it anymore. It is too stuffed. There is a limit.
The beautiful thing about the spiritual appetite is that there is no stomach to limit the size of your intake. And you eat, and you eat, and there are no stomach walls to confine your appetite. That is wonderful. You know, I used to get up in the morning, early in the morning, and I would study the word of God. And I would study, and I would study, and I would study, until late that night, and I was still studying, still studying, reluctant to get to bed. I just felt, "What a pity that we have to sleep for six, seven, eight hours. What a waste of time, that I could study all through the night." And so reluctantly, late, I have to close the Bible — or leave it open usually, because usually I leave my Bible open all the time so that I don't have to look for the page again the next day. And then I go to sleep, and the next morning, I can't wait to get up and study again. Helen knows how in those days, it's from morning to night, I never stopped studying the word of God, because I could never — my appetite was always good. Day after day, week after week, month after month, feeding, feeding, feeding on the word of God. Oh, it's wonderful. Delicious. And sometimes, I got so excited by the taste, I rushed out to tell Helen, "Oh, this is wonderful! This is wonderful!" She would be saying, "What? What is wonderful?" So delicious is the word of God. Hunger and thirst for the word of righteousness.
And the result is, because you love the truth. A person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness loves the truth. I'm very grieved by one thing today, among the churches particularly. And I pray to God that none of you, and especially those in training, none of you will ever become like this. That is to say, they have come to love certain types of doctrine, certain forms of theology, certain denominational teachings, more than the word of God itself. And we say, this must never become our disease. You know, you can become so fixed and rigid in a certain dogmatic opinion, that no amount of the word of God will change your view again. Because you have stopped loving the truth. You have come to love your dogmatic opinion. You have come to love your denomination. And it is quite sickening.
Let me tell you that we, as a church, are officially Baptists. We are registered as Baptists. We belong to the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches of Canada. This church does. But there is much — and let me say it — that sickens me about the Baptists. And I am very frank. You see, as a pastor, I get endless leaflets and papers from various seminaries, and various Baptist colleges, and various Baptist organizations, and other kinds of organizations too. And I leafed through one of those magazines the other day, and it just sickened me. The whole thing was about Baptist this and Baptist that, and the wonders of Baptist doctrine, and that even Baptists were there in the days of the New Testament. Even John the Baptist was a Baptist, of course. Ridiculous. It just makes me sick. We have become more devoted to a denomination than to the word of God itself. So that the word of God is there to prove that we are the best. I mean, Roman Catholics, and as far as Presbyterians, and all these other inferior denominations — but the Baptists. And it was saying, in this magazine, "Which denomination can trace its origin back to the New Testament? Only the Baptists." I was so ashamed, I felt like writing a letter in to say, "We resign from the whole Baptist union. Forget it." I am sick of this. We have not a loyalty to a denomination or to a particular church, but to Christ and to his word. But minds have become very narrow. There is not a love for truth. And Christians can behave worse than non-Christians, insulting one another, slandering one another, heresy hunting. Sickening. Why? Because there is not a love for truth.
We must be people who are willing to go wherever the truth takes us. To face whatever consequences comes from obeying the truth. If there is anything in the word of God that shows me that I am wrong, or that my denomination is wrong, or that my church is wrong, I submit to it without question. If anybody, anywhere in this world, in any denomination, can prove to me that anything that I say is not true according to the word of God, I shall publicly withdraw it. I shall publicly confess it. Anywhere. Because I love the truth, not my reputation. My reputation counts for nothing. My name counts for nothing. But the truth counts for everything. No man can be a person who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. What is righteousness if it isn't truth? Can there be righteousness which is a lie? By definition, righteousness is truth. I hunger and thirst for the truth, no matter where that truth comes from. If the Roman Catholic has something to say which is more correct than I am saying, I will acknowledge that the Roman Catholic brother and sister is right. He is right. I cannot say, "I am a Protestant, he is a Roman Catholic. Everything the Roman Catholic says is false. It's rubbish." There are Roman Catholics who speak more truth than I speak. If he can show me anything more than I understand in the truth, I will learn from him. Let him show me from the word of God, and I will accept it anytime. We must not be dogmatic and narrow. "I believe this, and I don't care what you say." This is revolting. This is revolting. We must never have this kind of attitude. We must be people who love the truth unconditionally.
And I am disappointed with Martin Luther, even though he is a reformer, a great reformer. But I am disappointed with him, because he failed very importantly at one such point, as I have mentioned once before, and I will mention it again. I am not loyal to a Reformation doctrine. I am loyal to the word of God. And where a reformer is wrong, I will say he is wrong. Whether it is Calvin, or Luther, or anybody else. Because if I can show from the word of God he is wrong, he is wrong. I don't care whether he is Calvin, or Luther, or anyone else. Luther made an extremely serious error when he insisted on a doctrine of justification by faith alone, regardless of anything else. And I have said before, and I say again, we are justified by faith, yes, but not by faith alone. It has to be faith and then works. A faith that results in works. It is not the works that saves us. It is not faith that saves us. It is God who saves us through faith, but not without works. That is most important to understand.
And then, when Luther looked at James, he found that James contradicted him, of course flatly. Because James chapter 2 says flatly, "Therefore is a man justified not by faith alone, but by works." Luther was so offended that he wanted to take his Bible and tear James out of the book. Because it flatly contradicted Luther. And as I said also before, he started in Germany the trend which has become what is modern-day liberalism. It started with this so-called literary criticism. Once you start criticizing the word of God, as Luther did, saying that James was just a "strawy epistle," fit only for the fire, or to be fed to the swine. But what else do you do with straw? Then you have done something very wrong. Alas, Luther. We must love the truth above our most cherished doctrines. And if the word of God contradicts what I say, then so much the worse for my doctrine. We cannot say, "Well, I don't like James," or "I don't like any other book in the Bible." James spoke the truth, as any open-minded person understands that he did. And so we must have this attitude, I beg of you, to be lovers of the truth. To accept the truth, whether it comes from Roman Catholics, or from Presbyterians, or from whoever they may be. I don't care what the denomination is, so long as they are speaking truth from the word of God. I don't care who they are. That is vital.
And another thing is this. The person who loves the truth checks and rechecks his doctrines in the light of God's word. He does not assume that they must be infallible. I have been reading a book lately on discipleship, written by a very well-known church leader in North America, whose name I shall not mention, because I am not attacking a person. But his teaching on discipleship is in complete error. It is completely wrong. Why? Because he has started out with all kinds of preconceived ideas. Whenever we teach a doctrine, whenever we make a statement even, let us have the habit of mind to check and recheck the statement in the light of God's word. What is the error of this brother? Well, he teaches this. He says, first of all, when you become a Christian, you become a convert. Now from being a convert, you graduate, or are trained, into becoming a disciple. And then when you become a disciple, you will be trained to become a worker, which is the next stage. So you start with being a convert, you graduate to becoming a disciple, and then you graduate to becoming what he describes as a worker. Well, this is absolute nonsense as far as the word of God is concerned. I mean, if you had even had the elementary knowledge of opening a concordance and looking under the word "convert," you will look in vain. There is no such thing as first something being called a convert, and then a middle category that is called disciple, and then you graduate to something called worker. This is absolute nonsense. And yet his whole book is based on this particular distinction, even illustrated with diagrams. So that through evangelism you got converts, and then through teaching you got disciples, and he doesn't tell us what's the next step that makes workers — at least not in the diagram, there isn't.
Now you see, these are the kind of errors which then results in people saying, "Well, isn't then a disciple a sort of second stage in the Christian life?" This error is very common among Chinese churches. It is entirely unscriptural. And here you find a prominent church leader making this kind of elementary mistakes, because he did not check his teaching in the light of God's word, and then misleading all those people who read this kind of books and follow his teaching. And this happens again and again, time and again, with the best intention in the world, because there is a failure to check the truth in the light of God's word.
So let us then conclude by observing these points. The person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness must hunger and thirst for the truth above all things. Not for his denomination, not for his church organization, not even for this church or any other church, but just for truth, for Christ. Only in this way, like Paul, we will consider all things lost in our pursuit of the truth. And you will find that there is nowhere else you can find the truth except in Christ. If you can find the truth anywhere else besides Christ, come and tell me about it. I will go anywhere where the truth is. But there is nowhere you are going to find the truth. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Test it, and you will find that that's truth. You can't find truth, spiritual truth, in this world anywhere outside of Christ.
And so the end result of it is this. Whether you study the word of God, whether you hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God, whether you love the church — that is not this church or that church, but whoever loves the Lord Jesus, whether he is a Roman Catholic, or whether he is a Jewish disciple, or whether he is a Presbyterian, or whether he is a Baptist, whatever he may be — he who loves Christ, that is my brother, and that's my sister, whatever his denomination. But no matter whether you love these — whether it is — you will find that all of it is summed up in Christ, who is the truth, who is the sum of all righteousness.
So then let us conclude and bear this in mind. Blessed is the man who hungers — keeps on hungering — and thirsting for righteousness, for he shall be satisfied. That is a promise. I am well satisfied in Christ, and yet I continue to thirst and hunger for more, until that day that I gain Christ. Not having a righteousness of my own, but a righteousness in him. That is what feeds my soul now, that righteousness from him, until I become completely like him. Until, through this feeding on righteousness, I grow up into the full stature of Christ, with righteousness in every part of my being. I am still growing in that direction. Not as though I have already attained, as Paul said, but I press forward.
So you can see, as we ponder these marvelous words of the Lord Jesus, that it sums up everything. The whole course of spiritual life is in it. Beginning from repentance, all the way through spiritual maturity. It all has to do with feeding on righteousness, until it's fully internalized and vitalizes every part of our being. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.