The Hungry
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
The Father declared Jesus as His beloved Son, in whom He was well pleased (Matthew 3:17). Following the joy of that moment, and before entering His ministry of grace, Jesus goes into the wilderness. He is led there by the Holy Spirit and fasts (Matthew 4). In the Old Testament the people of God, at times of crisis, set everyday life aside and fasted and prayed to confess their failure and cast themselves upon God. The Lord Jesus goes into the wilderness in all the perfection of His Sonship. He demonstrates through His fasting His devotion to the Father and the fulfilling of His will, not living by bread alone, “but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (v. 4). All the Beatitudes are seen perfectly in the Saviour. His hunger and thirst were to do the will of God. All our blessings come from His power to do this; “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God” (Hebrews 10:9).
The Lord’s ministry addressed unrighteousness. He constantly highlighted and judged the hypocrisy, legalism, and manifest failure of those responsible for the spiritual well-being of God’s people. At the same time, He dedicated Himself to addressing, in grace and with humility, the needs which surrounded Him. At Sychar’s well, wearied, hungry and thirsty, He leads one lost soul to Himself (John 4). Afterwards, His disciples encourage Him to eat. He replies, “I have food to eat of which you do not know”, adding “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). On the Cross, the Lord Jesus in all the exhaustion of His sufferings says, “I thirst.” His next words were not words of exhaustion but of power: “It is finished” (John 19:28,30).
Before His resurrection, the Lord’s disciples did not understand His total devotion to His Father’s will. Nor in that devotion did they see the manifestation of the Father heart. Philip even asked Jesus to show them the Father. There is a sadness in the Lord’s reply, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person (Hebrews 1:3).
In Christ, we discover “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17), all attributes of the fruit of the Spirit of God. The Lord has made us righteous and set us free from sin to become “the slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:19). We follow the Lord, in pursuing righteousness (1 Timothy 6:11 and 2 Timothy 2:22) and being guided in it by the word of God (2 Timothy 3:16). In 2 Timothy 4:8 we are promised a crown of righteousness.
This morning let us remember and worship our Saviour who is the “King of righteousness” and the “King of peace” (Hebrews 7:2), looking, with hope in our hearts, to the millennial day when righteousness will reign (Jeremiah 23:5) and on to the eternal day wherein righteousness will dwell (2 Peter 3:13).
And, in the meantime, may His love cause us to hunger and thirst for righteousness as we seek to be “filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:11).
