Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / The Sermon On The Mount
Raising The Bar By Desperation 05/27/07
Sermon Series: Raising the Bar: Living Above Mediocrity
Message: ‘Raising the bar by desperation’ Text: Matthew 5:6
Introduction:
Play Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Hungry Heart.’
Hungry Heart
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
Everybody's got a hungry
heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hungry heart
I met her in a Kingstown bar
We fell in love I knew it had to end
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingstone again
Chorus
Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don't make no difference what nobody says
Ain't nobody like to be alone
Chorus
Bruce knows how to make a point. Everybody’s got a hungry heart. The man in the song tried to satisfy his hunger with a women and found that didn’t work.
The ‘Boss’ made a deep theological statement when he wrote
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.
Isn’t that sad…? So many people don’t know where they’re going but they know they’re going the wrong way, and that doesn’t seem to stop them…they just keep going, looking for something, anything to find satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
Transition: In our text this morning Jesus uses hunger and thirst as metaphors to describe the Christian life of the Christian as he/she searches for satisfaction and fulfillment.
Turn to Matthew 5:6 (pg. 739 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you) It’s here we’ll discover that we raise the bar of spiritual expectations and action in our lives by desperation.
Read: Matthew 5:6
I. The problem: unsatisfied, unfulfilled lives.
Being hungry isn’t pleasant and it can produce odd behavior.
ILL: Have you ever noticed that fashion models when they walk down the runway almost never look happy, they always have a serious or stern look on their face? I’ve figured out why. They’re hungry! They haven’t eaten in 12 years!
Why is hunger and thirst a good sermon illustration? Because what food and water are to the physical life, so righteousness is to the spiritual life.
People hunger and thirst for more than just food and drink. They also seek after satisfaction and fulfillment in life. They search and search… but always end up unsatisfied and unfulfilled. No matter what they do they just can’t seem to find anything that ‘hits the spot.’
We shouldn’t be surprised…God isn’t.
Read: Ecclesiastes 3:11b ‘He (God) has set eternity in the hearts of men.’
Theologian St. Augustine described it this way
· Thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it finds rest in thee.’
Theologian and Scientist Blaise Pascal adds
· We have a ‘God shaped void in our lives’
Transition: Everybody’s got a hungry heart and we go off looking for something, anything that will bring satisfaction and fulfillment. However, there are only two places we can look: the world and the Word.
II. The worlds answer to the problem.
People have a huge void, a deep emptiness in their lives and they are willing to grab anything to fill it.
· Pleasure
· Recreation
· Wealth
· Recognition
· Drugs, alcohol
· Sex
· Things
And they expend a great amount of time, money and effort trying one thing after another because that’s how the world tells them they’ll find satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
What the world won’t tell them are the tragedies people experience trying everything.
· The thrill of lust leaves behind guilt and loneliness.
· Drugs and alcohol can’t keep you from waking up in the real world with an even bigger mess in your life.
· The acquiring and accumulation of wealth leaves you with a lot of things and people who claim to be your friend only to leave you when the money’s gone.
Yet…
Like a river that don't know where
it's flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going
We know it’s not working, we know we are going the wrong way in life…but we just keep going.
God, speaking through the prophet Jeremiah understood this and explains why this happens.
Read: Jeremiah 2:12-13 ‘Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD. “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.’
God is saying that we have an unending stream of living water in him that will always bring us satisfaction.
But, instead of going to him, we look elsewhere, we dig our own wells only to find that they always run dry leaving us unsatisfied and unfulfilled.
Transition: So, if you’re hungry and what you want is something that satisfies and brings fulfillment in life and you haven’t found it in the world, where can you turn? To the Word.
III. The Word’s answer to the problem
Read: Isaiah 55:1-2 ‘Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.’
God’s Word reminds us that we spend our money, time and effort on things that don’t satisfy. Our satisfaction is not being met by the things of the world….so stop looking there….look someplace else…LOOK TO ME!
ILL: C. S. Lewis once said ‘We are half hearted people, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like the ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.’ (Lenny Correll )
‘We are far too easily pleased.’ Our standards and expectations for that which satisfies and brings fulfillment to our lives, friends, are way too low. We need to raise the bar! We must hunger and thirst for those things that God’s Word says will bring us satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
Transition: Let’s talk a bit about this kind of hunger and thirsting.
A. Hunger and thirst
Read: Psalm 63; Psalm 42; Philippians 3:8-12
The psalmists and the Apostle Paul knew what it meant to hunger and thirst after God.
· It was their passion.
· It was their singular obsession.
· It was the air that they breathed.
· It was what got them up in the morning and sustained them through the day.
· It was the kind of hungering and thirsting that can’t be satisfied with a snack…a once a week meeting with God for 75 mins on Sunday.
· This is a lifestyle choice
· a constant feeding on the presence of Almighty God
· a persistent desire to know and experience God every day
Jesus is saying,
I want my people, to want me,
more than anything else.
That’s the kind of hungering and thirsting Jesus is talking about here. So what it the focus of such a pursuit, how do I know it’s God’s presence?
B. Righteousness
Jesus says we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Defined: Greek (Dikaiosune) state of rightness,
to be in a right relationship with God.
There are three aspects of righteousness or being in right relationship with God.
1. Legal Righteousness: We have been declared righteous by God and are in a right relationship with him through faith in Jesus Christ.
2. Moral Righteousness: We have and display a right character and right conduct that is pleasing
to God.
3. Social Righteousness: We display a right responsibility to one another, one that is pleasing to God.
Righteousness is our right relationship to God displayed and lived out by walking daily in his presence.
Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount is calling us to desperately pursue righteousness in our lives, knowing it will not be easy because:
· It is countercultural
· It is a radical witness to the power of God’s love
· It is the display of the transforming effects of being a saved people who walk and live in the presence of Almighty God.
To hunger and thirst for righteousness is the holy pursuit of God’s presence, not just enough to soothe a guilty conscience, but a conviction to walk rightly before God… everyday.
Jesus himself raises the bar and addresses the issues of the heart. He’s telling the crowd that day and all of us here this morning that
· he is that True Righteousness
· he is the One we must hunger and thirst after
· and he is the only One who can fill the emptiness inside us.
Please understand Jesus is not calling for us to hunger and thirst for greater duty, for more things to do for him. This beatitude is not so much about obedience as it is about relationship.
Jesus is calling for a deep, desperate hunger and thirst for a closer relationship with him.
Transition: Jesus’ sermon on the mount demands a radial obedience and life altering change, it demands we raise the bar of our spiritual expectations and actions by desperately hungering and thirsting for him, everyday. When we do, he’ll reward us.
IV. The promise: satisfaction and fulfillment
How? You’ll be filled: satisfied, fulfilled, complete, not wanting anything.
The Greek word for filled was originally used to describe the feeding of animals until they were so full they could eat no more.
The idea here is to have a deep, passionate, close relationship with the one who not only created all things but who holds all things together.
Why keep messing around with things the world tells you will bring happiness, satisfaction and personal fulfillment when they will, in fact, only bring heartbreak, disappointment and more painful emptiness?
· If you hunger and thirst for the things of God,
· if you are desperate for him,
· then he will fill you to overflowing with his presence, power and purpose.
Conclusion
ILL: The story is told of a young man who came to Socrates and told him that he wanted knowledge. "Follow me" the philosopher told the student and led him to the edge of the ocean and into the water, without warning Socrates grabbed the young man and plunged him beneath the water and held him there until the struggling stopped. He dragged the boy to the shore, left him gasping on the sand and returned to the market place. When the boy recovered he sought out the teacher again and asked him why he tried to drown him. Socrates replied, "When you were under the water what did you want more then anything?" The reply of course was "air". And Socrates responded by saying, "When you crave knowledge like you craved air, then you won’t need me or anyone else to guide you." (Dennis Giptill)
· That’s hungering,
· that’s thirsting,
· that’s a passionate pursuit.
· That’s how Jesus wants us to pursue him.
Let me end with this challenge.
· Is your life right before God?
· What is it that you hunger and thirst for in your life?
· Where is your heart….who has it?
Could it be that one of the reasons that the grass seems greener everywhere you look is because you’re not desperate for God, that your one pure and holy passion… is not the pursuit of righteousness?
Hungering and thirsting for God is the thermometer that determines the spiritual health of the Christian.
· When you lose your hunger and thirsting,
· when you stop eating and drinking…
· you die, physically and spiritually.
As you eat and drink this Memorial Day weekend, let it remind you to hunger and thirst for God.