Monthly Archives: March 2014

Hungry and Thirsty No More

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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)

Be Meek

Be Meek

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Google is looking for failures.  Well, not exactly; they look for people who have failed and who, through the experience of failing, have developed a certain humility and grace about how they learn and respond.  The NFL is looking for men who don’t know how to play football.  Well, not exactly; they are looking for players with lots of raw talent but who are willing to learn from a coach.  In every type of endeavor there are hotshots and superstars who flame out because they think they have all the answers.  They get replaced by people who are willing to learn and grow.

That’s the principle behind this next saying of Jesus:

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.  (Matthew 5:5)

Jesus didn’t say a timid milquetoast; He said the “meek,” which means teachable.  When used to describe a horse, ‘meek’ means gentled and trainable, responsive to the commands of its trainer.  A meek person is not a doormat.  Rather, he or she is responsive, in this case to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Jesus described Himself as meek:

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle (literally, ‘meek’) and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   (Matthew 11:29)

Meekness, in this teaching, follows spiritual emptiness (poor in spirit), and grief (those who mourn).  Jesus promised to comfort those who mourn their spiritual bankruptcy.  How?  By giving them the Holy Spirit (also called The Comforter in John 14:16) to live in their souls forever. (See: Don’t Take the Fire Escape!) But the Holy Spirit does no good for the person who is not meek, who does not listen and respond.

The promise for the meek, however, is that they will inherit the earth.  This promise, is in the future tense because it will become a reality one day.  It’s ultimate fulfillment will come at the end of the age, when God creates a new, perfect heaven and earth.

But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.  (2 Peter 3:13)

What will a perfect earth be like?  I cannot imagine it.  But you don’t want to miss it.  Be meek.

Don’t Take the Fire Escape!

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You are startled awake by the loud blaring of the fire alarm.  You can already smell the smoke and you hurry from your room on an upper floor of the hotel.  Rushing down to the fire escape, you discover that it is about to be overcome by flames. So you turn around and head back the other direction.  You have to fight your way through a stampede of hotel guests who are trying to reach the fire escape.  “No!” you say, “Turn around; you will die if you keep going that way.”  Most of them don’t believe you.  Some call you an idiot for ignoring the fire escape sign.  Those few who decide to trust you, turn around and follow you in the “wrong” direction.  They live.

Jesus was in a situation like that.  He knew we were thundering toward death.  He urged us to turn around and head the “wrong” way, in order to find eternal life.  That is why so much of what He said seems up-side-down.  Like this:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  (Matthew 5:4 )

He didn’t say that those who grieve are happy.  He said they would one day be comforted and therefore are blessed.  This statement follows the previous one about realizing our spiritual poverty.  The kind of mourning Jesus was referring to was the desire to be spiritually full, spiritually rich, without being able to change one’s spiritual bankruptcy.

Jesus said people in that condition would be comforted.  He wasn’t talking about someone who would feel sorry for them and say soothing things.  He was talking about a total reversal in their spiritual bank account.  Here’s how I know:  Jesus said,

‘If ye love me, my commands keep, and I will ask the Father, and another Comforter He will give to you, that he may remain with you—to the age; the Spirit of truth, whom the world is not able to receive, because it doth not behold him, nor know him, and ye know him, because he doth remain with you, and shall be in you. ( John 14:15-17 Young’s’ Literal Translation)

I used that old fashioned sounding translation because they gave the literal translation of the word Jesus called the Holy Spirit – Comforter.  It is the same root word He used when He said those who mourn “will be comforted.”  The people who are spiritually bankrupt and who mourn their condition, who are unable to be good enough or spiritual enough to change it, will be comforted.  How?  They will receive the Holy Spirit, Who will “remain” (live)  in their souls forever.  This is eternal life.

Ok, but what’s all this business about “if you love me and keep my commands?”   Those are like the folks in the hotel hallway who turn around and head in the opposite direction because they trusted you.  That’s what happens when you trust and love Jesus.  You turn around, you follow, you live.