Those Who Hunger and Thirst after Righteousness

1Seeing the multitudes, he went up onto the mountain. When he had sat down, his disciples came to him. 2He opened his mouth and taught them, saying, 3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 4Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. 10Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Wealth is something human beings cannot do without. What people own has already become the measure of their character and their worth, so as long as they can make money, they will use any means at all. Human worth and character have now been replaced by the worldly wealth a person holds, and it has come to the point of worshiping money. Not everyone is like this, but the world has changed into one where people easily throw away morality, conscience and faith in front of money, and take other people’s wealth by force whenever they can. As people’s thinking changed like this, the view that anything goes as long as you make a lot of money spread everywhere, and people grew stingy about sharing with their neighbors. Once people come to think that it is enough if they themselves are well off, they grow stingy about sharing in their neighbors’ suffering, so a disregard for life spreads everywhere, and robbery, fraud and murder increase.

Then what is the way to turn the hearts of people racing toward evil like this, and who can bring light to a dark world? The churches, which have been given the responsibility of exposing with the truth the sin of people sinking into materialism, are silent now. The churches are all tied up in the size of their buildings, the number of their members and their pastors’ degrees, and they are decorating the church more lavishly than the world does. God told them to proclaim the real truth, but they build far bigger and more lavish buildings than the world’s, as if boasting over who has the biggest one. Truth, the glory of God and the fullness of the Holy Spirit go into the sermon in small amounts, like seasoning, while worldly blessing has become the main ingredient. He told us to fulfill our role as light and salt, but there are not many churches now working hard to be the light. He told us to be the salt so that souls would not rot, but churches that preach the truth are hard to find, because they are watching what people think. When God said in Hosea 6:6 that he desires goodness and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings, he did not mean that he does not want sacrifice; he meant that we should not live a faith that is only a formality.

1 Samuel 15:22

22Samuel said, “Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying Yahweh’s voice? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

This does not mean that God dislikes sacrifice itself. It means that if we worship in truth and in the Spirit, even several times a day, God will be very pleased, but he does not want worship and sacrifice that are not honest. When the Amalekites attacked Israel without mercy, God was furious and said he would blot out the name of Amalek so that it would not be remembered. Then he commanded King Saul to strike Amalek and destroy them utterly, leaving nothing of what they owned. But along the way, although God had commanded him to destroy everything, King Saul thought it a waste to kill the Amalekites’ best animals. So he killed the worthless animals and brought all the best animals back to Israel. And he made an excuse, saying that he had spared the best animals because he wanted to offer God a good sacrifice.

But even if you offer a sacrifice the world thinks well of, as human greed would have it, God does not accept it. King Saul, who defied the will of God, could not judge what came first, and in the end he even set up a monument so as to take all the glory for himself. When God saw this, he drove him from the throne forever.

God wants us to know him before we worship or sacrifice. Only when we know God can we fully offer the sacrifice of obedience that he accepts. If we do not know the will of God, we may look as if we have faith, but we will live our life of faith however we please. To judge and decide our faith as we please is, in the end, to show that our own thoughts, righteousness, pride and knowledge matter more to us than God. We judge both our life of faith and the sermons we hear by our own standard, but we must think hard about what kind of worship God wants and what kind of prayer he wants to hear. To live by the will of God, we must first know for certain what he is saying through the Bible. Once we know it for certain, we must worship in truth and in the Spirit. In your view, are believers today offering worship that God would accept? If believers had lived their life of faith by the word of truth, like the five wise virgins who stayed awake, their faith would be shining now, when the nation is in such danger.

There is no field, whether politics, the economy or education, where believers are not found. But even though believers are placed everywhere, they are not shining, so the world is growing darker and darker. Believers have not lived the life of believers, so they cannot shine boldly into the darkness. They are not doing the work of salt, which must melt itself down and sacrifice itself as God commanded so that the world does not rot, so the church is not gaining strength. Then to whom was all the worship believers have offered so many times, and what were all their endless prayers for? If the church had taught truth and the Holy Spirit rather than material blessing, believers would have become lamps full of the Holy Spirit and would have lit up the darkness where they stand. If the church had taught the word rightly from the start, without compromise, there would have been no need to tell believers to go out into the world and do politics well or save the economy; they would have taken up the responsibility they bear as believers. Of course believers cannot change a world that is racing toward judgment. But the church has stood in this land for a hundred years, so if the churches had preached only the gospel, consistently, for those hundred years, there would probably be believers changed by the word fighting sin everywhere by now. The church must not only stress formal worship and prayer to believers; it must teach the living word of life and help them worship in truth and in the Spirit. Anyone who has gone to church for just a few years knows at least that the Syrian commander Naaman was healed of leprosy, and that Elijah prayed and brought rain that had not fallen for three years and six months. People have heard countless times how Joseph, sold as a slave by his brothers, became governor in Egypt and kept his people alive, but because they heard it only as a Bible story, they cannot apply it to their lives. Daniel and Nehemiah were carried off as captives, yet in that land they became prime ministers, brought their people home and rebuilt the temple; these things really happened, because they relied on God.

Presidents, rulers, pastors and believers who serve God must stop blaming others and first repent so as to set their own faith right. When a believer becomes a politician and is no different from people of the world, the churches and pastors must take responsibility, because they did not teach the gospel properly. And when people harm their own lives and the lives of others, lose heart and cannot get up again at the first sign of hardship, it is because they were never taught rightly who the owner of life is. The owner of our life is not ourselves. God gave us life and God will take it back, so we must never decide for ourselves to do as we like with life. Harming another person’s life is murder, but harming yourself is also sin, so we must not do it. To people who have lost heart and lost hope like this, we must tell the fact that God came to this earth himself for them and died in their place. When the countless churches, the pastors who must preach the truth, and the believers who must live by the truth take responsibility and boldly preach the gospel, the work of the Holy Spirit will surely come.

There was a time when I prayed judging people by my own thinking. For one person I prayed that they would be blessed, because they truly loved God, and for another I prayed that they would repent, because they were worldly. But I came to see that God, quite unlike what I thought, loves every person unconditionally. He said, ‘I do not show favoritism. If I had saved people by sorting the good from the bad, as you have judged them, there would not be a single soul in this world to be saved.’ Then he said, ‘I saved even the thief on the right when I heard only his confession of faith, and I forgave the disciples who left me,’ and, ‘Remember that salvation is not what you do but what I do; you only pray for the souls I have entrusted to you and tell them, nothing more and nothing less.’ He said, ‘Even someone who looks evil to you must be saved, and as I have forgiven you, you too must forgive those souls and pray for them.’ He said, ‘If a soul does not come back even though you have told them and prayed, I will not hold you responsible, but if you do not tell the truth to the souls I have entrusted to you and do not pray, I will surely hold you responsible.’

There is a reason God has let you hear the word of truth. It is so that you will tell the truth to the souls entrusted to you. Until now the church and we believers have not done this properly. We have grown only our heads while filling our hearts with the world’s garbage, so the world mocks the church and us. If the church has gone the wrong way until now, now is the time to turn back. We must earnestly seek grace before people become Satan’s slaves.

Matthew 5:6

6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Jesus is commanding you to live as those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. To hunger and thirst after righteousness is the desperate longing of someone searching for water to survive in the middle of a desert without a drop of it. You have probably never been a pregnant woman stealing because she was hungry, or so desperately thirsty that you lost your reason, so this may not feel real to you. It is said that people who risk their lives to come south from North Korea cross the river ready to die, because they are so hungry and long so much for freedom. How could we ever understand how they feel? The hunger and thirst we only hear about cannot be known without experiencing them. 2 Kings 6 records the hardship and suffering of Israel in detail, and through this event I want us to feel what it is like to hunger and thirst after righteousness spiritually.

Ben Hadad, king of Syria, brought a large army and besieged Samaria. Surrounded by them and unable to get food, the people of Samaria could not bear their hunger and committed the evil of eating their own children. One day a woman cried out to the king of Israel for help. The king said he no longer had any power and could not help her, and asked what the matter was. The woman answered that the other woman had told her they should eat her son today and the other woman’s son tomorrow. They had already eaten her son, but now the other woman was hiding her own son and would not give him up, and she asked the king to help her so that she could eat that son. When the king heard this, he tore his clothes and groaned. I do not really know how hungry someone must be to eat their own child, but when Jesus says we must hunger for righteousness and thirst for the word, he is speaking of a spiritual famine as desperate as what these women were going through.

Have you ever longed for God’s grace so much, hungering for God’s righteousness and thirsting for the word, that you nearly lost your reason? People sometimes lay down their lives for justice, and fight to their last breath to defend their own righteousness. I wonder whether people who fight so boldly for the world’s justice are making the same effort to be filled with God’s righteousness. The more we throw away human righteousness, the more God’s righteousness fills us, so Paul trained himself to throw away his own righteousness, as one who dies every day. Do you perhaps hurt as if your heart were torn, and feel so sorry that the whole day is painful, when you have not fully offered your worship? If you do not talk with God in prayer every day, do you lose the wish to eat or to laugh, so that living itself seems meaningless and it is hard to bear without praying? If you are a believer, you must have the faith that no good thing in the world is greater than the joy of understanding the word, and that for the church and the salvation of souls you can sacrifice yourself. Sadly, we believers do not have even this basic faith. You must throw away the absurd idea that reading the Bible and taking time to pray in order to understand the word is only for pastors. Salvation is not given by the pastor; you receive it directly from God by your own faith, and heaven is not something the whole church enters together but something each person enters.

Jesus said that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are blessed, for they shall be filled. Only with an earnest faith that hungers for righteousness will you be filled with eternal life, the grace of God and the inheritance of heaven. Only when you are full spiritually can you look around you, sacrifice yourself, share what you have and show love. A hard-hearted person can never do good. But a believer who is spiritually full and mature can take part in the work of God. A believer who has become poor in spirit, mourns for the salvation of souls and receives the comfort of God is a holy believer who hungers and thirsts after righteousness.

Matthew 6:33

33But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.

People of the world do not know that God has richly provided everything for them to enjoy, so they live anxious about what they will eat, what they will drink and what they will wear. To people who waste their years like this trying to secure food, clothing and shelter, Jesus said that this world is a place where we live the brief years of travelers passing through, so seeking his Kingdom and his righteousness comes first. He was saying that if we believe his word that the kingdom of God comes first and live by it, what we need will be supplied naturally. Faith is a spiritual war over whether we believe the words of Jesus or not. Faith is believing what the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the righteousness of God, has said, and wisdom is living by what he said. For the only Son, Jesus, took on a human body, came to this earth, and promised that he is the bread of life, that whoever comes to him will not be hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty. We who once lived with Satan as our father and our husband have become holy beings who serve God as our Father and Christ as our husband. Believers who have received such a deep love have been given the blessing of laying down every heavy burden and enjoying rest.

John 4:14

14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

From now on you must think about what water you will drink. You must decide clearly whether you will drink the water that overflows in the world for the sake of the flesh, or the water of life that Jesus gives. The water the world gives only quenches your thirst if you draw it and drink it yourself. So people are afraid of being thirsty again and cannot leave the world, and in the end they choose eternal death to guard water that will dry up. But the water Jesus gives, though it cannot be seen, is a spring that wells up to eternal life in each person’s spirit as soon as they believe, so there is no need to fight with others over it and no need ever to be thirsty again. People acknowledge only what they see with their eyes, so they do not value the water of life, but you who hope for the eternal kingdom must keep the water of eternal life in a clean spirit.

When a Samaritan woman who lived in the town of Sychar came to draw water from the well, Jesus asked her to give him some water to drink. Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with each other, so the woman was surprised and asked how he could ask her for water. Then he said that if she had known the gift of God and who he was, she would have asked him for water instead, and he would have given her living water. The woman thought she needed nothing, since she had a well to drink from whenever she was thirsty, and at first she could not understand how this Jesus, who had nothing, could give living water that would end all thirst. But when she understood that the well Jacob gave only quenches the thirst of the body and cannot satisfy the longing of the soul, and that the water Jesus gives is the word of life that never runs dry, the woman threw down her water jar, which she needed to live, and ran off to spread the gospel.

The word of Jesus is a spring that never runs dry. This word of life is now dwelling in your spirit. If you are thirsty and longing now, I hope you will drink the water of life that wells up without end through the truth. That is because the water of life is a spring that never runs dry, flowing all the way to the throne of God. He said that the world’s water must always be paid for, but that the water of life you may come and drink freely, as much as you want, without price. If you lead longing souls to Christ and share the water of life with them, God will give you the inheritance of the earth as a blessing. I hope you will not be shaken by the world’s temptations but will always stand before the Lord as one who hungers and thirsts after righteousness. If you share the water of life so that other souls can drink their fill of it, God will fill your longing with the power and grace of heaven. I hope you will become holy believers who, like those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, always stay close to God, receive overflowing blessing, and save souls headed for death.