Jesus said in Matthew 5:6, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Now this is not a hunger for experiences, nor is it a hunger for blessings. It is not a hunger to have a ministry, and it is not a hunger for a position or a place. It is not a hunger or a striving to build an image in people’s minds. It is a hunger and a thirst after righteousness. Deep in our hearts there has to be a hunger and thirst for righteousness. It is not only a hunger for God, it is a crying and yearning for the Lord to perfect your spirit and bring purification in your life.
As David said, …he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Psalms 23:3.
There is a need, and when our spirit realizes that need there comes a hunger and a thirst after righteousness. The Sermon on the Mount seems to hit right at the very heart of it. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness… Matthew 6:33. It is not talking about experiences, blessings, or any other thing but His righteousness. Don’t be seeking what you are to eat, or what you are to wear, but seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and the other things will be added.
The mark of a mature spirit is that yearning, striving, and crying after God that is always there. In Philippians 3:14, Paul told how he was pressing toward the mark, striving and reaching. Oh, how he wanted to be following the Lord! Then he said, “Let as many as are perfect, or mature, be like-minded…” (verse 15). The characteristic mark of the mature spirit is the yearning, striving, living on tiptoe, and crying out to God with hunger and thirst. You cannot love the Lord without desiring to be one with Him, and you do not want that oneness sullied or marred by the fact that something in your spirit is wrong.
The wrong things in the human spirit ruin marriages, destroy relationships between parents and children, and spoil the oneness in the congregation. Have you noticed how brotherhood, love, and unity thrive as people are all reaching up with hunger and thirst after the Lord? But it is for righteousness: to be righteous in the Lord.
II Corinthians 6:16–7:1 is a passage of Scripture which tells about this righteousness: And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God: even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing… This is speaking of purification.
“Does that mean we must go back to the old order of things—we can’t touch anything?”
No, that is in the Old Testament. The laws of cleanliness, of the clean and the unclean, are not based on that; they were a type of something to come. It has to do with what your spirit touches. In Haggai 2:12, 13, the question was asked, “If you touch the clean thing will it make you clean, or if you touch the unclean thing will it make you unclean?” (Haggai 2:12, 13). The vessels had to be purified, and there could be no uncleanness in them.
Likewise, there has to be that purification of our spirit, until our spirit does not reach out and touch the contaminating thing. …touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
Come out ye from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing—it is so easy for people to bring that down to a level of do’s and don’ts, and it is not on that level at all. It means those things which are defiling our spirit. It is speaking about being cleansed from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord. It is a hunger in the heart of the people for righteousness. Everything is judged according to defilement of spirit, so there has to be within us this yearning and crying out, “O God, I hunger for Thy righteousness.” For we know our fellowship with Him is related to the righteousness of our own spirit.
Don’t you yearn for an end to that in your spirit which troubles and disturbs you? Don’t kid yourself, though you brush it out of your mind, it will come up with telltale evidences. What is it that blanks out so that you don’t press into the Word? It is a defilement in your spirit. What is it that causes you to withdraw under pressure? It is the defilement of your spirit. What is it that brings nightmares and dreams of violence and escape? What causes the mind to dream such things? It is not the pork chop you ate before you went to sleep. These are things which come out of the subconscious, and so you cry out, “O Lord, cleanse me of the defilement of the flesh and spirit. Let me perfect holiness in the fear of God.”
How can we perfect holiness? Oh, it can be done, as the Scripture says, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. If you really want to be hungry, to seek God, and to be thirsty after the Lord, here is the secret: change your attitude toward God’s dealing with you. The twelfth chapter of Hebrews tells about rejoicing when you are chastened of the Lord, because when you are chastened of Him you will become partakers of His holiness. Do you want righteousness in your spirit? Then quit complaining. Quit being rebellious, for the Lord chastens you and puts the pressure on you, because in no other way can He bring your spirit into submission than by His chastening. When He chastens, you begin to partake of His righteousness. You hunger after it. You thirst after it.
Here is the passage from Hebrews about loving the chastening of the Lord so you can really love the Lord and walk with purity of heart. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons, My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou are reproved of Him: for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not? But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? (He is the Father of your spirit.) For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees; and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but Father be healed. Hebrews 12:5–13. This is speaking of His righteousness. Chastening yields His righteousness in your spirit.
Do you want your spirit to be wholly righteous? Do you want those impurities and imperfections, those propensities and desires, and those things which have come down from Adam, out of your life? It has to be more than a desire; there must be a hunger and a yearning. The yearning after the Lord, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, comes through this one attitude when you are going through the pressures: you say, “Thank You, Lord, for what You are putting me through, because I know it is doing the job. It will make me a partaker of Your holiness.” Somehow, in all the pressures He puts on you, it opens your spirit up with a yearning and a crying out after the Lord.
There is a yearning, crying of your heart for God, a hunger and thirst for His righteousness to fill you when you are tired of the frailties and faults that you see in your spirit, and you want to be cleansed and purified. You are yearning to respond in God to His demands and not respond with the inadequacy of your own spirit. When God says He wants something of you, respond in God to it instead of responding in your own inadequate spirit. The world doesn’t seem to change much, one way or the other, whether or not you become upset about things. Something in your spirit can go right on walking with God, not reacting to the circumstances, events, and conditions around you. The cry of my heart is, “O God, get me out of the way, and everything in my spirit out of the way, and move through me.”
This Beatitude holds the promise to you of becoming a pure worshiper, because it is out of the spirit made righteous that worship comes forth unto the Lord. Pure worship comes from a spirit that is cleansed of its human reactions and responses to the world about it. It says like Paul of old, “None of these things move me” (Acts 20:24). When you know how to respond to the world about you, then you can really worship.
Have you ever come to church and found you were not able to worship very well because you were worried about something? Someone had insulted or injured you. You were fearful of something happening. You tried to worship and you couldn’t. Response to the things that were going on around you and the circumstances of your own life overwhelmed you, and the worship was gone. A pure worshiper ought to be able to worship God in the middle of pandemonium. No matter what a worshiper is being subjected to—anyplace, anytime, in any situation—he ought to be able to worship God.
There were a few people in Bible times like that. Paul and Silas had that in their reaction to the beating at Philippi, their bodies lacerated by the whip. In those days salt was rubbed in wounds to prevent infection. You can imagine how that felt! Their feet were put in stocks in the inner dungeon, and there, not feeling sorry for themselves, they were singing praises unto the Lord (Acts 16:23–25). Their spirits had been delivered of human responses, human reactions to the environment and the world about them, and even to the reactions of the flesh and its sufferings. Can you understand that early Church singing and chanting when the lions were tearing them apart? There is only one way you can understand it—their spirits were beautiful. They hungered and thirsted for righteousness. They had become pure worshipers because their spirits had been cleansed of human reactions.
How God loves that kind of worship and praise that comes up to His name! I wonder how many times people have managed to touch that worship. But that pure worship comes from a spirit that has been cleansed of human reactions. It has been cleansed of human responses to the world about it and to the circumstances of one’s life. This Beatitude is the path to becoming a beautiful, pure worshiper of God. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they will be filled. The spirit that has been made righteous, filled with His righteousness, is the spirit that can really worship God. If you want to be changed, this is the path: hunger and thirst after righteousness.
It has been a long time since someone has come forth, like Elijah or Elisha, to bring judgment. I know of the mercies and the long-sufferings of the Lord, yet we have never seen an age of so many people making fun of God and of those who do righteously. The man who does righteously is hated. Not many hunger and thirst after righteousness. The judgments are certainly going to return. The time has come for people to be moved to pray for the judgments of God to be in the earth again, and they will. Yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee, for when the judgments of God are in the earth the people learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9).
The hunger and thirsting in your spirit is very necessary. The Scripture says if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you will be filled. It has both a promise and a principle involved.
God promises that the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness will be filled. The principle is, of course, that God always responds to hunger. Hunger opens the bottle of your spirit, and God starts pouring of Himself into your life. The yearning of spirit is like a mouth drinking out of an endless fountain. The hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled automatically. It is like drinking water from a glass, though there is a limit to that, and that thirst may not be quenched. But Jesus said, “He who drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst again” (John 4:14). It becomes to him who drinks such a source of the fountain.
Hunger and thirst is a demand of your spirit to feast on the Lord: “Pastor, show me how. Don’t just build it up, don’t make it a beautiful thing, but show me how. I want to see its beauty, but I want to know how to walk in it.”
One person asked, “Are you born with a hunger for God, or is it something that can be appropriated? I’m so disturbed that I’m not hungry for God.” When you are so disturbed by thinking that you are not hungry for God, that is hunger in itself. It is a mourning, a yearning in your spirit. It is a hunger and a thirst in your spirit.
Psalm 63:1 says, O God, thou art my God; earnestly will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and weary land, where no water is. Can you understand what the Psalmist meant by the “dry and weary land where no water is”? He meant the hunger and the thirst, the crying out for God to meet your life. It is like the Forty-second Psalm, As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God… Psalm 42:1, 2.
The man who does not hunger and thirst after righteousness is not demanding of the Lord. When he reads the Scripture he is impressed, and he studies it. He learns it factually as he would learn any book. He may read it for a little inspiration and a springboard for his prayers. When he listens to sermons, he is interested in the doctrine and the structure of the sermon, to find the principles behind it, to see what cues will help him now. When he prays, he is concerned about the world. He is concerned about his own world, concerned about the church, and he prays about the needs that to him are obvious, only asking God for answers: for a change of circumstances; for guidance, for direction. When he ministers, he is seeking God for things for people. When he receives ministry, he is concerned about things that must be done for him or to him.
But there is a strange quality about the man who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. He never opens the Bible to read it without hungering and yearning for it. That silent cry goes on in his spirit, the prayer without ceasing, “Fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me, fill me…” It is the hunger that transcends all other appetites and all other desires. When he reads the Word, his spirit says, “Feed me, feed me—I hunger, I thirst.” When he prays, he is concerned about all the things everyone else is concerned with, but his spirit is carrying on a prayer of its own with groanings which cannot be uttered, “Help me, fill me, fill me, feed me, feed me, feed me.” When he receives ministry, he is concerned about what his ministry would be and what he is going to do, but he is not only looking for answers and guidance; he is saying, “Feed me, feed me, feed me—I hunger, I’m hungry.” The hunger is always there.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. It is a yearning that nothing else can really satisfy. It is that importunate knock that comes at midnight, “A friend of mine has come on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him” (Luke 11:5–10). It knocks and it knocks and it knocks. It is a wail and a cry, yet it is a demand on divine promise: “Complete it! Complete what You’ve begun! Finish it! Finish, O God, that which You began in Your handiwork within my life. I yearn for it! O God, leave me not in this state! Shape me! Shape me into the vessel you want me to be! Fill me! Fill me!”
It is the hunger that seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, even if it means ignoring every other human need. It can be seen in men who walk away from good jobs, which they worked all of their lives to build up, and go off in the hills to pray and wait on God. it can be seen in a desperate quiet that comes over people. You speak to them, and they are somewhere else. They are searching; they are climbing a mountain to meet God.
When a young person is hungry and thirsty, looking to the Word, receiving all the help he can, all the time reaching to the Lord, then the perverse things in his spirit will go. That person will be filled with the righteousness of God. It is not enough to be a Christian. You must deal with the perversities in your spirit that make you an ineffectual Christian. You want to be a channel of the Lord. You want to be a believer through whom His love can flow. Therefore, you hunger and thirst after His righteousness. That’s what you reach for.
Sometimes people get discouraged and start to back away from it. Don’t. There is no great problem to walking with God if you hunger and thirst after Him.
We need to look at our own spirit with an honesty of heart. That is the best thing that can happen to you—get a good honest look at your own spirit. Then you start hungering and thirsting for righteousness, yearning down deep; nothing else will satisfy it.
It is not enough to work around problems and situations; be concerned about your own spirit in every one of them. Be concerned about your own spirit in every relationship, in every decision, and in everything that you do. Take a good look at yourself and say, “Lord, I hunger and I thirst for Your righteousness.”
Otherwise, you will go on with those same traits, those same little things that are like land mines and booby traps; you walk along not knowing when they are going to explode. You never know when the thing that is in your spirit is going to get you, or what can happen to you with just the right combination of circumstances. Have you ever wondered how strong you are, how much you are really set in a walk with God? It is said that everyone has a price; everyone has a situation in which he can break, except when the grace of God comes.
You never see a man hungering and thirsting after righteousness whom the devil was able to break. The only man the devil can break is the man who is looking for something else. Then the devil can frustrate him on that until his hopes are shattered.
But he who is hungering and thirsting after righteousness seems as if he never fails, though he may go through all kinds of situations. Hunger and thirst is a demand—“O God, finish what You have started in my life. You are the Author. Be the Finisher. Don’t leave me half perfected in spirit.” Hunger and thirst cries out to God for a completion of that which He has begun.
Hunger and thirst seems to be the lubricant which keeps us as new wineskins before the Lord. We need that which keeps us from being a stiff old wineskin (Matthew 9:17). What is an old wineskin? One who is satisfied with the experience of yesterday: “Let it ferment and work a little more, but it’s pretty much set now and there will never be much change.” There are certain wines that may improve with age, but most wines do not. After processing they are bottled, and at that particular point they are not going to work anymore. They may keep their potency for several years, and some wines may improve with age, but old wineskins do not get any better, and chances are the wine could grow sour. So if you want new wine, then you want to be a vessel able to handle it—a new wineskin, flexible for all that God will bring forth in the earth. Then apply generously the lubricant of hunger and thirst after righteousness, because an old wineskin is one who is satisfied. He hungers no more.
This hunger and thirst after righteousness is the only way, or you will be swallowed up by your own shallowness and your own emptiness. What a terrible thing! Do you know your own emptiness? Do you know your own shallowness? Do you want that to engulf you? Then hunger and thirst after righteousness. You may say, “I’ve failed God so much. I lack so much.” Don’t confuse that with hunger and thirst. Self-condemnation is unbelief.
Here is one more description of hunger and thirst. The hunger and thirst after righteousness is so great that it does not despair over your failures or your lack, but it believes for your emptiness to be filled with His righteousness. It is no longer concerned about your shortcomings, because it wants an end to it. It wants His righteousness to fill you. You are not asking to improve yourself; you are asking for His righteousness to come and fill your spirit. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Sometimes, despairing over your own failures is but an indication that you feel you could do better, and you are just about ready to make a gigantic effort to correct the thing in your own self. Don’t be so foolish. That would be trying to perfect in the flesh what was begun in the spirit. You cannot do it. The hunger and thirst for righteousness is for His righteousness. It is not an ambition to change things in your own self by your own efforts, by your own wisdom and your own disciplines. It goes beyond that. It is a yearning and crying to God for His righteousness. Nothing else but His righteousness will satisfy you, because that brings the answer to your emptiness and shallowness. Nothing else can do it.
We want our spirits to hunger and thirst after righteousness. We read in the Old Testament, …the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. I Samuel 2:3. He knows all that we do, but He goes beyond just looking at our actions; He weighs them. When He weighs them, we want Him to find a right spirit behind them. We want Him to see the cry of our spirit after righteousness.
We must help each other. We cannot be critical and absorbed in it just for ourselves. We must cry for all of us to be met by God, for a hunger and a thirst for the Lord, for His righteousness to rain upon us. The objective of our hearts crieth, “Early will I seek Thee, O Lord.”