When you pass a wreck, why do you look? Why do people gather around a fight? Why do we think the way we do? Perhaps you have had times when your inability to think about or do the things you know are right has led you to despair. Perhaps you have felt as though you were drowning in your own wickedness. If so, Jesus understands and has good news:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6)
Remember the scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” when they open the canteen and there’s barely a drop left? Middle of the desert, in the blazing heat? That’s thirsty. Actually, two days later is thirsty, but you get the idea. What’s hungry? No, strike that. What is it to hunger? That’s worse than being hungry.
Hungering and thirsting for righteousness is the end result of knowing your spiritual poverty and mourning about it, knowing you cannot fix it. Jesus says that’s the kind of person the Kingdom of Heaven is for. That’s the kind of person who is ready to listen and ready to cooperate in an attempt to be healed. That’s the kind of person who feels morally starved and parched.
Jesus said those who would trust Him, would cross from death to life, because He would give His Holy Spirit to live in their dead souls. They would experience a “newness of life” as they are fully reconciled to God. In this teaching He says those who hunger and thirst for righteousness would be filled. He used the word for eating your fill, the word they used to talk about fattening cattle. Imagine being that full of His Spirit, that full of righteousness.
That’s the promise.
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)
On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” (John 7:37-38)
FRESH BREAD OF LIFE 