Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Good morning. Welcome to Thrive. So, we started two weeks ago this series called The Blessed Life, and we're looking at these nine sayings of Jesus in the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount. And I said the first week that these words are actually offensive and counterintuitive and revolutionary. And you might go like, wait a minute, I have them on a plaque on the wall. Yeah, well, you've got a very subversive thing on your wall, because they basically say something totally different than what the world says is the blessed life and how the world sees the way to a blessed life. So, you're going to find out some interesting things in that. Now, I find them offensive to the way I would want my life to look blessed. I don't know about you, but blessed are the poor in spirit is not the first thing I think of in the morning as a blessed life. Right? But I also said last week that when you look at the crowd that was gathering around Jesus from Matthew chapter 4, the people who are sick and from all sorts of places and backgrounds, this place called the Decapolis, 10 cities that were a mix of Gentiles and Jewish people from Syria, it says they were coming from Jerusalem, from Judea. And they were dealing with demonic possession and they were dealing with being harassed by all sorts of things and they were impoverished and they were broken people and they were coming and gathering. And these were his disciples, that the words of this blessed are, the poor in spirit, blessed are, those who are meek would actually be words of comfort. And would like, wait a minute, somebody's paying attention to us. Because they were the people who were being dismissed by society. They still are. Are they not? Yeah. I also shared in the last two weeks that these nine Beatitudes are not nine different classes of people. Okay. How many of you have seen The Life of Brian by Monty Python? Okay. Just don't feel bad. I mean, I saw it in the theaters and I think it was in high school. And that's how old it is. Okay. Yeah. The Cenozoic period. But we did have movie theaters at that time. And it was a little sacrilegious. I'll tell you that. But he has the blessed are, the peacemakers. They think he's saying cheesemakers. Did you? And then it's like, why is he picking on the work? And they basically treat each of these as like a different class of people. They are not. They're basically nine different facets of the same people. And actually, in the end, there are nine different facets of Jesus himself. And anyone who follows him like teacher, like students. So he's the one who actually is the meek, the humble one, the peacemaker, the poor, the pure in heart and the persecuted. And he's saying this is the blessed life. Follow me. You'll be blessed as you follow me and as you take after me. So these are simple and profound words. They're offensive to me because it's not the way I want to live. And yet when I see them as counterintuitive, I start understanding this is really what life's all about. And it's a good thing. Yes. As Todd Lindbergh says it this way in a piece he wrote, he said, the Beatitudes provided dizzying commentary designed to turn upside down the political and social world of the Roman Empire of Caesar Augustus and of the Jewish religious elite of Judea and Jerusalem. This is the opening move of a more drastic and fundamental reassessment of political and social affairs, applying not only to its own time, but to all future times to our day. And so today we're going to explore that one facet in what I think is the fourth, the fourth of these nine. And that is this phrase, this beatitude, Matthew, Chapter five or six. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. OK. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Now we're going to explore these three points. We're going to take them one at a time, though. The first is the vital need for righteousness. Then we're going to go to the fullness of understanding what righteousness is and then the way of righteousness. But it's basically the first point is the vital need for righteousness. So Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. When's the last time you've been really hungry? Really, really thirsty. I mean, really. Any of you? Do you have a time in your life where it's like I was truly dying of thirst? Yes. When was that, Helen? In Haiti. In Haiti. I can see it because there's not necessarily wells present or potable water around. And it was probably one hundred and five degrees. Yeah, we got separated from the vehicle that had the water in it. And we had been out for quite some time, you know, in the fields and doing some work. So you can almost get heat stroke at a time like that. And it can be very dangerous. Anyone else have a s...