The Beatitudes #5

So we're going to be moving on to our next beatitude, our next blessing, if you will. And that one is that Jesus says those who, they'll be blessed, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, that they shall be satisfied. As we study this passage, my hope is that God will help us and awaken in us a strong desire to become more like Jesus, who is our righteousness. He's our example, and through faith in him, we are to become more like him. That's the goal of our... of our text this morning. Now before I read it, I want to tell you a little bit about how we could misunderstand this passage. And it has to do with what goes on in society around us. The desire here is to be satisfied, to be content, to be happy. And it's very easy for us to pin our lack of satisfaction, our lack of joy, our lack of contentment on the things that go on in society.

When Martin Lloyd-Jones was preaching on this passage, I don't know the exact date of it, but I suspect that it was in and around the Second World War. And in his sermon on this passage, he just went on at length about how everyone thinks that if nations could just be nice to each other and be happy and content that everything would be fine. And he says, no, that will never work. That will never work. Until nations obey this very passage, we will have wars. We will have trouble. because we're seeking for happiness instead of righteousness. And so our search this morning, the thing that we're to hunger and thirst for, is righteousness, not happiness. And if we trade one out for the other, we will never find either. Our text this morning is Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.

He opened his mouth and began to teach them saying, 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 gentle for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now I want to start by talking about righteousness.

Okay, this is the object of our pursuit. He says that we're to hunger and thirst, that Christians hunger and thirst for righteousness. And so we would do well at the very beginning to define what righteousness we're supposed to be hungering and thirsting for. There are two types of righteousness in the Christian life. The first one we're going to focus on is a righteousness that fulfills God's law, a righteousness that satisfies. and meets God's standard. In the garden, after creation, God made a covenant with Adam before the fall. And there were terms to that covenant. And he didn't use the word righteousness in that covenant, but the covenant of works required and demanded of Adam and Eve perfect righteousness. And the way that it was expressed in the garden was, do this and you'll live. Of all the trees I've given you, you can eat.

Freely take. Rule over the earth. Take dominion. As long as you obey all of this and don't do one thing, eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you'll live in Eden. You'll live in perfection. There will be no sin in the world. And so we should understand the terms of that covenant to be perfect righteousness, perfect obedience to God. Righteousness is obeying the law perfectly. It had to be done without any failure, and it had to be done that way forever. We might look at our lives from day to day and say, you know, I did pretty well today. Or we might look at our lives and we might say, you know, I did poorly this week. But the sort of righteousness that was required of Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall, in the covenant of works, was a perfect and perpetual obedience. There was no room for a bad day. There was no room for hangry.

there is no room for blame shifting. There is no room for the slightest failure of any kind at all, ever. James 2, excuse me, James 2.10 says, whoever keeps the whole law, perfect righteousness, whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point has become guilty of all. These are the terms of righteousness. When you hear the word righteousness, you should think perfect holiness, perfection forever. That's what righteousness is. And that's what God requires of us. That sort of righteousness. These were the terms in the garden. And the fall did not change these terms. The covenant of works has not gone away because Adam sinned. He failed to keep the covenant. And so he was booted from the garden and death entered the world. First through the animal that was killed.

to provide a covering, then with God removing himself, a spiritual death, and eventually Adam and Eve's bodies met physical death. Through sin, death entered the world because righteousness was lost. Righteousness was gone. It was no longer possible. Even if Adam and Eve had only done that one thing, they could no longer be righteous. They couldn't say, we'll do better next time. There would not be a next time. They had broken the covenant. They were now unrighteous. I think there's an idea in the church today that all of that and everything I've just said, it's true, but it's very small in our rearview mirrors. It's like it's way back behind us. And it's not really important anymore. It's not the stuff that we're driving by. It's not the stuff that's in front of us. It's stuff that happened and applied a long, long, long time ago. But now that Jesus has come and...

We live after his ascension. These things aren't incumbent on us anymore. These aren't the things that we're supposed to be paying attention to, thinking about, or caring about. And that is a lie. Those things are as true for us today as they were for Adam in the garden. In just a few verses later, in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says this. He says, Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished. Now we'll come to that passage in due time, and we'll open this up more. But there's two things I want us to focus on in that section. He says, I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. To fulfill what? To fulfill the law. To fix what Adam broke. This is what Romans 5 teaches us that Jesus did.

And so he didn't come to get rid of the law and to say that is old and it's outdated and it no longer applies. You don't need to worry about it. Do not think that I came to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it. And he did. And then he says that not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law, shall go away, should end up in our rearview mirror until all is accomplished. Now what is the all that has to be accomplished? Is it just his death that has to be accomplished and then the law is done away with? No. Because that doesn't make us actually righteous in this life. It makes us righteous in God's sight. But when you become a Christian, you don't stop sinning. You don't all of a sudden go, oh, I'm so glad that now I'm a Christian and I don't have these troubles anymore. You and I, we're still sinners. And we'll get into the changes that go on in us as we become Christians.

But I want you to understand first that Jesus said he didn't come to abolish the law. He came to fulfill it, to provide righteousness that we couldn't and can't and will never be able to. And that the law is still intact until all is accomplished, until you and I, in reality, are perfect. Jesus came into this world to provide the righteousness that the law demands because we couldn't. This is the first and most important fact that we have to learn. You and I are not righteous. We are not perfect. We are not holy people. And we're not close to it either. In and of ourselves, we're not like pretty good. If that's the way you think of yourself, or if that's the way you wish you could think about yourself, you're undercutting your ability to love and serve God. Because you've believed from the very beginning a lie about yourself.

I'm better than most. We are not righteous, and because of that fact, we deserve death because of Adam's sins as well as ours. We are not capable of fulfilling the righteousness that God requires. Now, there's a couple of things we can do with this tension. One is we can take righteousness and just pitch it away. Put it in the rearview mirror and say, that's not what being a Christian is about anymore. Jesus came and he fulfilled the law. The law is not for us anymore. We don't have to worry about it. And there's a sense in which that's true. But I think that that idea has been abused and we've driven that car far further down roads it never belonged on. Because what we've done is taken any sort of moral expectation or character or demands of God that he puts on us as his people, as his creation, as his clay, and said, those don't matter for us anymore. That is an abuse of Scripture.

And so we may not take the law and say, I don't need it anymore. It doesn't apply to me anymore. I'm a Christian. But there's this middle ground also that I think is probably more prevalent or common in our lives. In fact, I'm convinced it is. It's true of me, and I know as your pastor, it's true of you. You don't take righteousness or obedience or standards and just pitch them away entirely. What we do is you change them. You say, there is still a standard, but it's not God's standard anymore. It's my standard. And is it any surprise that we change those standards to something that we can attain, something that we're close to, something that we're just beyond? But the truth is our standards don't matter. Our standards don't rise up to the righteousness that God requires. Paul, who by all accounts was the chief of sinners and also one of the most zealous and careful men who feared God and who wanted to do all that God required. It led him first to persecute the church and then to serve God mightily in planting and growing the kingdom of God during his life. Paul takes all of his standards that were set for him before he came to Christ, and he says, you know, I was a Jew of Jews. I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. As to the law,

I was perfect. I was a persecutor of the church. I was as good as anybody could hope to be. My standards for myself were higher than all of your standards for yourself. I was better than you. If we're measuring these sorts of things and we were to stack up my list of righteousness and what I've attained to versus what you've stacked up and what you've attained to, I've made it further, says the Apostle Paul. And then what does he say right after that about all of his standards and all of his accomplishments, he said, it's worthless. It's excrement. It's garbage. Why? Why would Paul say something like that? Because his standards were nowhere near God's standards. And so if Paul understood that his standards that he set up for himself could never meet God's standards, then we should never think for one minute, I'm doing pretty good. Or when we do, we should immediately go, By whose standard am I doing well? What righteousness have I attained to? Our standards, wherever we happen to place them, for ourselves and for other people, and don't miss this for a second, your standards are not just for you. Your standards are for everybody you interact with, and that is the source of countless conflicts in your home, in your marriage, with your children, in your workplace, other people not meeting the standards you have set up.

This is my standard for how my wife's supposed to speak to me, and she didn't do it. So, sinner. My husband didn't understand. He didn't read my mind. He failed in some way. He didn't meet my standard. Sinner. What are we doing? Seriously, what are we doing? Except saying, I have a standard that you didn't meet, and because you didn't meet it, I can judge you. I can be angry at you. I can hate you. But we're no judges. We would do better to remove the log from our own eye. So that we can judge righteously and graciously. So don't believe your own press. I know I talk about this a lot. And some of you, you may feel like I'm picking on you because you're already inclined to think you're a bad person. But I don't know that any one of us thinks we're as bad as we actually are. Because even when we think poorly of ourselves, it's still according to our standard. And our standard is woefully inadequate. So much lower than God's standard. The reason we get depressed is because we're like,

Oh man, I tried and I was almost there and then I didn't make it. And if that's how we approach our own standards for ourselves, how much further have we fallen short of perfect obedience forever? I mean, it's hopeless. It's hopeless. And so your work as a Christian is to believe first that you're a sinner and you are not righteous. And the fact that you're a sinner informs and infects. Everything you do. Everything. You may not be aware of it, but it does. You might look and say, in this interaction, how did I sin? And I think it's a silly question. I think you'd be better off and you would grow more as a Christian if you just took it as a fact that you sin all the time and most of the time you're unaware of it. Because that would produce humility in you and that would produce...

contrition and sorrow and hopefully repentance. But when you're trying to parse out, did I sin or didn't I sin or did I sin because you did this first, you've given up God's standards. Because you're still arguing the case. Like, I might be innocent. There might be this one little place where I was innocent. But what does Romans tell us? What does Paul say in Romans 3? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And he goes on and on, and he talks about our mouth and our language and our attitudes. And he says, there's none righteous, no, not one. There's none who seeks after God. There is not one. And yet we argue about our own righteousness in our own minds every day, and then with the people that don't meet our standards. And never do we ever get around to true and real righteousness. It's as if the Titanic is sinking and we are rearranging the deck chairs.

not paying any attention to the fact that the ship is sinking and we are on it. When David took Bathsheba and had sex with her, and then she got pregnant, and then he killed her husband, Uriah, when he became convinced of his sins, who did he sin against? He certainly sinned against Bathsheba, right? I think in our minds, I hear the echo, God, he sinned against God, and you know where I'm going, and we'll get there. But in our day-to-day life, Do we think of our sins as being sins against God or only sins against people? And I bring up David because David sinned against Bathsheba and he sinned against Uriah. But when David confessed his sins in Psalm 51, he says this, against you, you only, Lord, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight against you and you only. So you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. Now what is it that he's saying God would speak on?

And what is he saying God would judge except his sins? And he says, you're justified when you speak. You're not speaking out of turn. You're not speaking in untruth. You're not going too far. You're justified to say what you would say to me. And you're blameless when you judge because you're righteous and I see that I am not. How often do we get offended for our own sakes, for our own standards not being met? And how often do when God's sinned against and his word is blasted and our mouths are shut, does it not even register with us what we're doing? We get offended for ourselves, but not for God. The pressure you're feeling is the weight of the law. That's what you're feeling. And you're only feeling a bit of it. This is what Jesus came to fulfill. The demands.

and your inadequacies that are weighing you down. This is what he came to fulfill and to satisfy. There is wrath stored up against you for your sins. And Jesus came to satisfy the demands of the law for you, and he came to provide righteousness for you so that you could be freed of this burden. He came to give this righteousness, his righteousness, for you. Okay? Now, that's one type of righteousness. If we had to put all of the things I've just said under a heading, we would put it under the heading of justification. This is when God looks at us and he sees us and he says, there's a sinner worthy of hell and eternal judgment. This is who they are. This is what they are. This is what they deserve. Jesus enters into that judgment and he says, here's my righteousness. Apply it to them.

I'll take their judgment. All that stuff they deserve, I'll take it on the cross. Give them my righteousness. This is justification. You remember I said there's two types of righteousness though. And I'm convinced that this is not the primary type of righteousness that Jesus is calling us to pursue. For one, this is a righteousness you have nothing to do with. How can you pursue something that is not yours and that you can't go get? If you're hungry, you can go get food. If you're thirsty, you can go get a drink. If there's perfect perpetual obedience to the law of God, righteousness out there, where do you go to get it? If you have it, it's been given to you as a gift. Now, it is true that in the process of our lives and our experience, even when we were reciting in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, we were talking about effectual calling today, and he's going, well, how do you get this sort of thing? And in short,

it says God gives it to you, but along with giving it to you, he also gives you a desire for it. That is a gift itself. And so if you think, well, I did, I do want to be saved. I did want to be saved. I remember, I do personally, and some of you may as well, if you have some sense of when you were and weren't a Christian, you say, I want to be free from my sins in the same way that the men reacted to Peter's sermon at Pentecost. What must we do to be saved? There's this sense of like, I feel it.

I want free of it. That sense is something also that God gives you. That's not always the response to the preaching of the gospel. What did the Pharisees do when Jesus taught and preached about righteousness and the kingdom of heaven? They gnashed their teeth. They hated it. What did the crowds do? They left him. The response is not always acceptance. Many times it's rejection. And so what's the difference between acceptance of the gospel and rejection of the gospel? You're a better person than the one who rejected it, right? No. God gave you ears to hear. And he gave you eyes to see. And he gave you hearts to believe. Otherwise, you would have walked away with the rest. And so there is a sense in which we pursue the righteousness that Jesus gave for us. But only if God's given us an appetite for it and a desire for it. We don't naturally have that desire in us.

If this is the whole sort of righteousness that we're supposed to seek after, then our own personal growth in holiness and becoming like Jesus or Paul or our fathers or whomever has no place in the Christian life. Because what we're confessing, if Jesus' righteousness, our justification, is all we're supposed to seek, then it says there is no need or expectation for us to change. For us to actually be made new and renewed. We're not supposed to become more like Jesus in any real tangible sense. And this idea is largely what's caused so much trouble in the church today is we've taken away personal righteousness, personal obedience to Jesus and to his commands. And we've set it aside and said, that's not as important now. Husbands, die for your wives. Lay down your lives for him. Well, when I feel like it.

When I get around to it, I will, I do. You think I don't? Yeah, I'm sure you don't. I'm positive you don't. There's not even a question. Wives, submit to your husbands. When you agree with them, if that's the level, then you'll never do it. And you'll think you're justified for never doing it because you're like, well, I have to agree with them. Children, obey your parents. They're stupid. They don't understand. Young men, respect the older men. Younger women. Learn from the older women. Why? I know better than them. Why does God give us these and so many other commands in the New Testament after Jesus' ascension if we're not supposed to obey him? Or if we can't obey them? We take all of the commands of God and turn them into helpful advice for living. Do it however you want, but this is God's best. This is the best way because this is what God suggests we do. No.

When husbands fail to love their wives, they're sinning. When wives fail to submit to their husbands, they're sinning. When children dig in their heels and stiffen their necks and touch the outlet or give themselves to lust of some sort or give in to their emotions, they're sinning. They're breaking the commands of God. They're seeing a boundary and they're walking right over it and saying, that doesn't matter. My desires are more important than what God has said. When those things happen, and these are just a few of the most basic commands that God gives us, when we walk over them without feeling any slow, whoa, slow down in us, we are not doing what Jesus says in this verse. We're to hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I'm afraid we've become accustomed to not being concerned about righteousness at all. Or maybe when it's convenient, or maybe in the future.

Or maybe when the person who's causing me to stumble changes. But none of these terms are sufficient. The righteousness that we're supposed to pursue is a derived or a replicated righteousness. We look at the Bible. We look at the life of Jesus Christ. We read the commands of God and we say, this is what righteousness looks like. And Jesus says in our passage, pursue that. Go after it. Don't say that because Jesus came and did it all, and he did, that you no longer have anything to do as a Christian in your life. At the end of this section in Matthew, very end of Matthew chapter 5, he says this statement, and it's this heavy one. In case you're like, Pastor, I think you're focusing too much on the law, and that's not for us.

Jesus says at the very end in verse 48 of chapter 5, therefore, right? After all the stuff I've just said, therefore, here's the summary statement. Here's the application. Take this home and think about it. Therefore, you are to be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect. Where? Where are we supposed to be perfect? Only in the eyes of God, in the courtroom of God where he judges us righteous? Is that the only place we're ever going to see perfection? No. We'll see it in glory. So what about in between? What about between when he sees us as perfect and his wrath is abated? And when he makes us perfect at glorification, what about that section in the middle? You know what this whole section is? That's your life. That's your whole life. Is there any pursuit of holiness in that part? Be holy as my heavenly father. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

And the sweet thing about this, in those verses, is he doesn't say my father. He says your father. You are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. You're supposed to become like your dad. And so it turns out we actually are supposed to become righteous in this life. So you tell me, what in your life have you become that you didn't work at and sacrifice for and give priority to? Did you learn your work skill, whatever it is you do? Whether that work is being at home and taking care of your children or whether that work is wiring houses or designing things or lawyering or whatever. Did you just become good at it? You opened a box and there it was and you put it on like a suit of clothes and you're just all set. Of course not. You worked at it and you worked at it and you realized, I stink at this. I stink at it. Not only do I stink at it, I don't enjoy it. What happens when people get a new job? Great.

I hate it. And then they either quit or they learn. And the more they learn, the more they see how much more they have to learn. And that's life. Now, why will we accept that in our work, but we won't accept it in our spiritual lives? Why do we think that our holiness should just be something that shows up in a box and we just put it on and there's no more things to worry about? But we realize everywhere else, we have to work at it for our whole life. It shouldn't be that way. It really shouldn't be that way. I think the reason that we will work at it in our profession is because we see the fruit of it. And it's something we want. There's money. There's a name. There's responsibility. I can get and have the things I want, so I'll work at it. But with our spiritual lives and with righteousness and holiness, we're like, well, I don't know if there's anything at the end of all that to have that's worth pursuing.

It's foolish if we succumb to these lies. The only way that you'll become righteous in this life and prove that you're righteous in God's sight is if this verse is true of you, that you hunger and thirst for righteousness. Up to this point, we've been told that Christians are poor in spirit, that they mourn, that they're to be meek. And at some point in the progression of these Beatitudes, we say, well, what am I supposed to do? How does it work? Where do I turn? Which way do I go? And in this verse, he tells us which way to go. Go after righteousness. The words are not the same at the beginning and the end of this verse, but they're similar. He says here that blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And if you were here at the very beginning when I talked about the Beatitudes, I said you realize that we all want to be happy. We all want to be blessed. We want to live in this state. And now we come to the way to get it.

Do you want satisfaction? Do you want rest? Do you want peace? If you do, pursue righteousness. The problem is too often we switch out righteousness for happiness and we think happiness is a pursuit and it's not. You'll never find happiness if you go around looking for it and you'll commit all kinds of sin in the process. How many people do you know who are divorced, who got divorced with this simple thought, I'll be happier alone? Will you? Let me ask you, you know people who are divorced. Are they? Are their children? They may put on a good show of it. They may have a lot of fun. It may look good. Talk to them about their first marriage and see if they're happy. Talk about their children and the effect it had on them and see if they said, yeah, that was the way to go and it was wonderful. They will understand the cost. And so happiness is not a pursuit.

It's the result of a pursuit. We don't pursue happiness. We pursue righteousness. It's contrary. This pursuit, it acknowledges that there is something that we don't have that we need. Not that we want, that we need. Jesus uses food and water as examples. You need them. If you don't eat or you don't drink, you die. You need them. And so when your body says, I'm hungry. It's not a passing feeling. You don't say, oh, I'm hungry. I'll just ignore that. Keep doing what I'm doing. What happens when you do that? You get hungrier. You get more frustrated. What happens if you just perpetually do it? What happens if you become anorexic? Refuse to eat. I'm hungry. Body's saying, I'm hungry. And you say, no, you can't have food. Is it good for you? No, it's terrible for you.

It's awful for you. It's a slow suicide. It will kill you. Hunger, food, is something you need. If you say, oh, I'm not going to have a meal. You can skip a meal. You can skip a few days of meals. But you have to eat. It's not the sort of desire that's like, oh, we were just kidding. You don't really need this. You get hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. And at some point your body actually, the interesting thing is, your body actually will stop. sending hunger signals. If you were to talk to someone who has eating disorders, they would tell you if they've done it long enough, they actually lose their appetite, they lose their desire, which is even worse, you understand. And simply because they've lost their sense of their need does not mean that their actual need has gone away. They can think, I can just drink electrolyte drinks and not eat any food and I'll be fine. You can think that and believe that and do it.

your body will not submit to that and say, that's fine with me. And so we're to hunger and thirst after righteousness. It's something we need. You and I, we need to be righteous. We need it. Not just Jesus' righteousness, but we actually need to be righteous in this life or we will be miserable people. Why do I say we'll be miserable? Well, because he says the people who pursue it are satisfied. It follows then that the people who don't pursue it will not be satisfied and will be aware of their dissatisfaction. It makes me think about marriage today and young people and what they know and what they don't know or what they expect marriage to be like. And I think, you don't have a clue. If they're single, they look and they go, well, it's just not fair. It's too hard to get married. There's no good women. There's no good men. And I think, what a proud man or woman. You really think that you're that?

You're so much better than all the people you're looking down on. You're going to be an awful husband or an awful wife because you have no knowledge of yourself and how miserable you're going to be to live with. I'm not miserable to live with because you've never lived with you. They look at marriages that they, from all appearances, look happy, and they say, I got lucky. You got one of the good ones. Lucky me. I mean, I won the lottery. Sorry for you. I'll tell you a funny story, okay? So there was a bunch of moving going on last week, and there was conversation. This is about you. And they're talking about marriages. And someone made a comment. I wasn't there. My sons were there. And Tim and Nolan and I don't know who else were talking. And the comment came up, all marriages are really, really hard. And I think it was Tim who said, no, I think Pastor Dave and Vanessa have a real good marriage. To which my son Micah...

If you know Micah, you would not be surprised at all that he's the one who said it. He says, well, I just want to say as their son that I don't agree. Is that about what you said? Yeah. Now, why does Micah have that impression and why does Tim have a different one? Because he lives at my house and he sees my sin and he sees his mother's sins. And he does love us, but he sees the whole story. But from a distance, when you look at people's marriages, you go, oh, you know what? She seems so respectful. I wish my wife was that way.

He's such a compassionate and tender leader. He always is very attentive to his wife's desires. To the extent that that's true, they got there by fighting a lot over years. And they still fight about it. And to say that they're fighting about it is to say that they're working at it. And so the young people look and they say, well, it's so terrible. There's no good spouses. And they look at good marriages and they say, oh, they got lucky. It's not true. They chose wisely. There is such a thing as a bad spouse. Don't hear what I'm not saying. It is possible to marry a shrew of a woman or an effeminate man. It's very possible, and you'll have an awful marriage if you do that. But the good marriages that you see around you or that you admire are not that way by chance. They're that way because that couple has given themselves to working at this very thing, pursuing righteousness, hunger, and thirsting.

The satisfaction that you read, the result that you observe, is there because of years of hard work, sacrificing, and saying no to themselves. The quickest way to have a bad marriage is to say, I ain't going to do what God says I'm supposed to do. You're going to do what God says you're supposed to do, and then I'll do what I'm supposed to do. You'll be in my office in six to 12 months after you get married if that's your outlook. Promise. Promise you will be. The hungry man lacks food and that lack is what drives him to look for food. A thirsty man lacks water and his lack drives him to look for water. The unrighteous man lacks righteousness and his lack drives him to pursue righteousness. What do you do when you see unrighteousness in your life? Do you work to content yourself with it? It's not so bad. Do you try to trade out your unrighteousness for by changing the standard and saying, well, I think if I can't do this, well, at least I can do this and I'll get some of what I want. Do you ignore it entirely and say, it doesn't exist? If the hungry man doesn't get food, he will die. If the thirsty man doesn't get water, he will die. And if the Christian doesn't get righteousness, he will die. He will die. If a husband doesn't pursue righteousness as a husband, he will leave his wife.

And we're fools for thinking otherwise. Do you believe what I'm saying to you? Or do you still live in the delusion that you're not that bad and you wouldn't actually do that? Maybe not today. You're just trying to scare me, pastor. No, not only scare you, I'm trying to protect you. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who know themselves and say, I will pursue what God says I should do, regardless of what the people around me are doing. He will be satisfied. The man who stops justifying his actions because of the actions of others will be a far more contented man than the man who tries to control everyone around him. I think many men could listen to what I say and they say, this doesn't sound like leadership to me. Leadership doesn't do that sort of thing. And you know, you're wrong. You're wrong. There's a gross lack of and masculinity in our society and in the church. But it is possible for those who have discovered that fact and decided that they're going to repent of the cultural norms of manhood, it is possible for them to fail in another direction and it's as damaging of a failure. Servant leadership has had its heyday and it's no good. But it is actually possible to be a man who never lays down his life for his wife.

And do you think that's any better? Do you think it produces a better marriage? I assure you it does not. So if you want to be satisfied, Jesus tells you how. Pursue righteousness. And is it any surprise that if you read on, the majority of the rest of the Beatitudes deal with conflict. A peacemaker. Well, where do you need a peacemaker except in the middle of conflict? And beyond peacemaking, what do we find? Persecution. When people persecute you because of me. And so what am I saying to you? Except that you're to pursue righteousness in the midst of conflict. You husbands are to love your wives when she's being miserable. You wives are to submit to your husbands when he's being harsh. When you're not getting what you want, the commands of God are still there for you to obey. And you must still obey them. And too often we say, I can't. But we're lying. What we really mean is, I won't.

And we will reap what we sow. So don't be surprised if you sow selfishness and you sow impatience and you sow anger, that you will reap the fruit of that in time. Because in your sowing, you were not pursuing righteousness. You didn't see it as a necessity. To you husbands, how is it that Jesus actually made his wife pure? Yes, by dying. We are to wash her with the water of the word because we're not always in the act of dying. His bride was made pure through his death. Now every husband wants his wife to be pure without having to die. You'll never have it. You have to die. But if I die, then how am I a leader? And I say, you don't know the first thing about leadership then. Leaders die. Your wives think, well, if I don't say it, who will tell him? How will he learn?

I would simply ask you, is he learning by your constant dripping and complaining? Is it producing what you want? Are you happy as a result of it? No, and the reason is because you're not pursuing righteousness. You're pursuing happiness. So give up the idea that your marriages are supposed to be happy. Stop thinking, if I do this, then I'll have a happy marriage. The only thing you can do with God's assurance that will produce a happy marriage is for you to pursue righteousness. For you to pursue doing the things God says you should do, regardless of what your spouse is doing. Now, why am I going on about marriage? I need to end, but why am I going on about marriage? The reason I'm going on about marriage is because I've told you for over a year now, if you're over 30 in this church, you're old. You're on the old half. And if you've been married for more than five years, which is a very short time, you're in the older group of people, the more experienced group of, you haven't even put a kid...

into school yet, and you're the experienced one, which is to say, we're in trouble. So why am I saying all this? I'm saying all this because you all have been married for a year, a year and a half, or five, and you're really starting to be like, I'm not happy. I'm not happy. And I go, I know you're not happy. And the older men and women among us, before you got married, said they're not going to be happy. Not now. Not unless. They pursue righteousness. You wives, you don't think that your gentle and quiet spirit has an effect on your husband. And you're fools. There are a few men in this world, I suppose, who are so pig-headed and hard that they're not affected by it. But the majority of men have some sense of their failures. And if you'll be respectful of them, it will help over time. Will you get what you want today? No, you won't.

You won't, but you'll have honored God. You husbands think, my wife will learn to submit to me by my firmness and my bold leadership and my loud voice. No, she'll be like a weed that you just keep lopping off at the ground, but eventually, what happens to a weed when you cut it off at the ground? The roots go, and they pop up more, and eventually you've got a whole field of it you can't keep up with. Love your wife. Love your wife. I don't know how. I don't care if you don't know how. No man when he got married knew how to love his wife. Not one of them. And the man who thought he did will learn at some point he was wrong. As you raise your kids, what does it look like to be a righteous parent? The one thing I'll tell you, spank your kids. The Bible says you should spank your kids, okay? Some of you probably spank too much. And some of you probably spank for things that you shouldn't spank for.

And some of you probably do it when you're angry, which is to say, none of us do it perfectly. So we'll give it up and say, well, I know a better way than God's way. I'm going to do attachment parenting or I'm going to create a schedule that's oppressive to me as an adult because my child has to have this, that, and the other thing at exactly that time or they become a demon. I'll just tell you, it doesn't scale well. Even if you don't have a big family, you will raise a miserable child. that child will not be happy and you will not be happy. And it'll be because you never said no to them. And we could take this concept and apply it to every area of our life. If you're a Christian, your job is to pursue righteousness like you're dying of thirst, like you're starving. If you'll do that, you'll be satisfied. If you'll do that, then you'll have peace. Don't believe the lie. Well, I tried and it didn't work. Don't use that as a justification not to do what God says.

Do what God says. Pursue righteousness. Without it, you will not see God. So seek after it. This week, seek after it. Say no to yourself and say yes to the commands of God. That's the fruit of the gospel in your life. That's why Jesus came to die and to be raised again, was so that you could become like him. So this week, become like him. Ask God to make you like Jesus. Help me to die so that you'll be glorified. Help my desires to die so that obedience can grow. Let's pray.