The Hungry and Thirsty
6
The Hungry and Thirsty
Food and water are necessities, not luxuries. This was especially true in Palestine in Jesus’ day. Both food and water were used carefully and never wasted. The owning of a well and the cultivation of a field were matters of life and death. So when Jesus linked together hunger, thirst, and righteousness, He was telling the people that righteousness is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Our physical life depends upon food and water; our spiritual life depends upon righteousness.
Hunger
It has been said that human beings are what they eat. This principle is true not only of the body but also of the soul. The outer person depends upon food and water, and the inner person depends upon righteousness. The inner person of the spirit has appetites that must be satisfied, and if those appetites are not satisfied with the spiritual food that God has provided, then that inner person becomes sickly and weak. If the inner person is to function as it should, it must be fed.
The inner person has a sense of sight. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that the “eyes of [their] heart may be enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18). Our Lord lamented that although His disciples had eyes they saw not (Mark 8:18). His counsel to the church at Laodicea was that they anoint their eyes with eye salve that they might see (Revelation 3:18).
The inner person also has a spiritual sense of hearing. “He who has ears, let him hear” (Matthew 13:9). Christ’s sheep hear His voice and follow Him (John 10:3–4), but they will not follow the voice of a stranger (John 10:5). Immature Christians are “slow to learn” because they do not exercise their spiritual senses (Hebrews 5:11–14).
There is also a spiritual sense of taste. “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 34:8). “You have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:3). The soul has its hunger and thirst; those desires were built into humans at creation. “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Augustine said it perfectly: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” Just as it is normal for the deer to thirst after water, so it is natural for people to thirst after God. They may not know that their thirst is for God, and they will probably try to satisfy that thirst with a substitute that will leave them with more thirst. But a thirst for God is what it is, just the same. God has put eternity in our hearts, and the temporal cannot satisfy.
Those who have trusted Christ have found the answer to that hidden hunger and thirst in their life, for Jesus Christ is the bread of life, and He alone can satisfy. “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes on me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35). Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I shall give him will never thirst” (John 4:13–14).
It is good that a living being experience hunger and thirst. To begin with, hunger and thirst are evidences of life. Dead people have no appetites. Unsaved people have an appetite for sin; they are compared to dogs licking their own vomit and pigs wallowing in the mire (2 Peter 2:22). The Christian is a sheep—a clean animal—that enjoys the green pastures and the still waters. The kind of appetite we have is an indication of the kind of heart we have. The heart of the unbeliever, although it was created with a hunger for God, tries to satisfy itself with that which is not bread. Jeremiah says it most vividly: “They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (2:13).
The believer who hungers and thirsts after righteousness is giving evidence not only of life but also of health. One of the first symptoms of sickness is loss of appetite, and one of the first signs of regained health after sickness is the return of appetite. When the infection of unconfessed sin is at work in the lives of disobedient Christians, they lose their appetite for spiritual things. They spend their money on that which is not bread, and they feed on substitutes. But when Christians confess their sins and are restored to the fellowship, their appetite for the things of God returns.
Were it not for hunger and thirst, we would be unable to live and work. Hunger is a sign that the body needs fuel. If we could continue to live and work without knowing that we needed food and water, we would kill ourselves. Just as pain is a sign that there is something wrong with the body, so hunger and thirst are signs that the body needs something. The spiritual meaning is not difficult to see: A hunger and thirst for the things of God is preparation for life and service.
It is tragic when people hunger and thirst for the wrong things. The prodigal son yearned for excitement and popularity, and he found them in the far country. But they did not last, and he soon found himself hungry again, but this time there was nothing to satisfy the hunger. “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!” (Luke 15:17). He was so hungry that even bread would have satisfied him. Up till the time the famine hit him, he would have settled for nothing less than the finest luxuries the far country had to offer. First John 2:15–17 warns that our spiritual appetite can never be satisfied by the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. All of those things are passing away, “but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” This reminds us of our Lord’s statement to His disciples when they returned to Sychar after going for food: “My food . . . is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Jesus fed on the will of God; that is what satisfied Him.
What are the hungers in your life? What are the longings that you yearn to have satisfied? If our desires are apart from the will of God, to satisfy them means disappointment and judgment. If they are in the will of God, to satisfy them means enjoyment, growth, and fulfillment.
Holiness
Jesus tells us that the way to be satisfied (“filled”) is to hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is a hunger for holiness that fills the soul and satisfies the appetite of the inner person. It is too bad that we desire lesser things, including lesser blessings. When the people of Israel were “in the desert they gave in to their craving . . . So [God] gave them what they asked for, but sent a wasting disease upon them” (Psalm 106:14–15). Had Israel listened to God’s Word and cultivated an appetite for His will, God would have “fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock” (Psalm 81:16 KJV).
Theologians tell us that there are three kinds of holiness: imputed, which is justification; imparted, which is sanctification; and eternal, which is glorification. When sinners trust Christ, they are declared righteous; this is imputed holiness. As a result of this decision, their lives change, and they share imparted holiness. The righteousness of Christ becomes a part of their daily lives. The person who professes salvation but practices sin is not born of God (1 John 4:1–10). The Christian is not only justified by faith (Romans 5:10) but is justified unto life (Romans 5:18). Justification is much more than a legal matter recorded on the books of heaven. It is a personal matter that involves a living relationship with God and results in a living revelation of God in our everyday lives.
But what is holiness? To the Pharisees, holiness was conformity to rules; it was an external thing that completely overlooked the needs of the inner person. That explains why Jesus warned, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). A mere external piety born of pride and nurtured by the praise of others is not holiness. If the Beatitudes teach us anything, it is that holiness begins in the heart.
The words holy and whole belong to the same family. To be holy involves wholeness. Sin divides and destroys, but holiness unites and builds. Holiness is a basic attribute of God: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). When you hunger for holiness, you hunger for God. “My soul thirsts for God!” And to have God in your life means wholeness; He puts everything together. “Through Him all things are held together” (Colossians 1:17 Williams). When the prodigal son hungered for material possessions and thrills, everything fell apart. When he came to himself and returned to his father, everything was made whole again. In fact, what he was looking for in the far country he found right at home.
To be righteous means to be right—right with God, right with self, and right with others. When you hunger and thirst for God, you are causing the inner person to function as God made it to function. Your spiritual senses are exercised and developed (Hebrews 5:14). “Train yourself to be godly” (1 Timothy 4:7). There is a unity to the life of the person whose deepest desire is to know and please God and to enjoy Him. Instead of running from one substitute to another, seeking inner satisfaction, that person says, “All my fountains are in you” (Psalm 87:7). “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
As the inner person is satisfied with holiness, it becomes increasingly dissatisfied with sin. “Let those that love the Lord hate evil” (Psalm 97:10). To begin with, the mind grows in its recognition of sin. The closer we get to the light, the easier it is to see the defilement. The more we are satisfied with God, the more we are dissatisfied with substitutes, including religious substitutes. The mind recognizes sin, and the heart is repulsed by sin. The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow wallows in the mire, but the sheep has nothing to do with either one. The mind recognizes sin, the heart is repulsed by sin, and the will refuses sin. It is the appreciation of the excellent that motivates the believer to refuse the cheap and defiled.
When you control hunger, you control life. Find out what a person’s deep appetites are, provide the satisfaction, and you control that one’s life. Dictators and propagandists have followed this principle for centuries. If the appetite is not there, create one. The advertising agencies sell their services for this very purpose. It is unfortunate when our churches create appetites for lesser things—for religious entertainment instead of spiritual food, for multiplied activities instead of spiritual ministries, for sentimental music instead of the spiritual songs of Zion. Having once created the appetite, they must satisfy it, and this plunges our churches into that terrible maelstrom of promotion, celebrities, statistics, and instant results. The sheep need to be led by the quiet waters, but they find themselves drowning in a whirlpool called success.
People who want to master a skill must have a deep desire to do so or they will fail. Perhaps their motives are mixed, but if there is a hunger for achievement, they will have an easier time. Change the hunger and you change the person; control the hunger and you control the person. Jesus Christ wants to create in us a deep hunger for God, a hunger for holiness. It is this hunger that will change and control our lives as we satisfy it in Jesus.
Happiness
It must have come as a surprise to His listeners when Jesus equated holiness and happiness. He promised that they would be blessed if they hungered and thirsted after righteousness. They had seen the Pharisees practice their brand of holiness, and the Pharisees did not seem happy. There seemed to be no touch of blessing in their lives. The people in that day, like people today, equated holy living with misery. Why did they do that?
For one thing, they had the wrong idea of holiness. They thought of it in terms of negatives, for that was all that they saw in the Pharisees. The Pharisees were better known for what they were against rather than what they were for. Unfortunately, some Christians are that way today. Their Christian experience is a painful bondage instead of a glorious liberty. Jesus enjoyed life, even though life for Him was difficult. He was happy because He was holy. The Pharisees were neither happy nor holy, and Jesus pointed that out to them, so they crucified Him. His joyful, holy life so exposed their brittle piety that He became their enemy. Because the Pharisees had a faulty view of holiness, they robbed themselves of happiness.
But they also had a faulty view of sin, and a person with a faulty view of sin will not know how to find the righteousness that satisfies the inner person. Righteousness for them was a matter of meeting certain external regulations, and sin was simply not obeying those regulations. They never looked deep within their hearts as Paul did when he said, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). A wrong view of sin and a wrong view of holiness go together. When Isaiah saw the holiness of God, he immediately saw his own sinfulness, and he cried out, “Woe to me! I am ruined!” (Isaiah 6:5). The apostle John once rested upon Jesus’ bosom, but when the aged apostle saw the vision of the risen Priest-King, he fell at His feet as though he were dead (Revelation 1:17). The unbeliever cannot understand how Christians can behold the holiness of God, then confess their own helplessness and out of this experience find happiness. But, understand it or not, this is the divine formula: holiness, helplessness, happiness.
We must grow in our love for holiness. No doubt at the beginning of our spiritual walk we seek righteousness in order to avoid pain, the way little children obey so that they might not receive a spanking. This is a negative approach to building character, but it is the best way for a child. We have to begin somewhere. As we grow in grace, we discover that holy living not only avoids chastening but it also brings positive reward. “No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless” (Psalm 84:11). The danger here, of course, is that we are more concerned with the blessing than the Blesser, and holy living must be the result of a personal relationship. When we discover this truth, we graduate into the third level: We seek holiness in order to please the Father. The result of this experience is to reach an even higher level: We seek a holy life because we love God and want to glorify Him. The Pharisees loved themselves and sought to glorify themselves, and, as Jesus said, they had their reward.
Seeking to please the Father and cultivating a hunger for holiness brings about a remarkable change in our lives: We become more like Him. After all, we are what we eat, and if our food is to do the will of God, then our lives become the will of God. The will of God is not simply something we do; it is something we are. Holiness becomes to us the beauty of God, and we want that beauty for our own lives. You would never have looked at the Pharisees and yearned to have what they had, but if you had watched Jesus come and go among the people, you would have hungered for what He was. The publicans and sinners were attracted by the holiness of Christ; they were repelled by the religious piety of the Pharisees (Luke 15:1–2).
One of the essential differences between mere outward piety and true holiness is that piety makes you conform to a system, whereas true holiness conforms you to Christ and develops your own individuality. The Pharisees were each like the other; the disciples were individual and distinctive. The more we become like Christ, the more we are liberated to become our best selves. Abraham and Moses were both men of God, yet each was different from the other. Spurgeon and Moody were both men of God, deeply taught in the lessons of God’s grace, yet neither was like the other one. The “splendor of his holiness” (Psalm 29:2) is not by imitation but by impartation and incarnation. “Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Harmony
How does holiness bring happiness?
If knowing God, enjoying God, and becoming like God is our highest desire, then the fulfilling of that desire will bring us the highest happiness. “They will be filled” is Christ’s promise; that word filled carries with it a double meaning: “satisfied” and “controlled by.” If we hunger and thirst after God’s righteousness, then He will satisfy that hunger; and when He has satisfied it, we will discover that our lives are controlled by His righteousness in all that we do. Seeking to become like Him pleases both the Father and us. The higher we climb by His grace on this highway of holiness, the less satisfied we are with the things that make others happy. The disciples had come a long way in their spiritual walk when they could pray, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8 NASB).
Holiness brings happiness not only by sparing us the pain of sin and its consequences but also by purifying our hearts and minds and giving us an appetite for the eternal. “And I—in righteousness I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness” (Psalm 17:15). As we become more like Christ, we share more of His joy.
Too many Christians believe they can satisfy their hunger for holiness by multiplied activities and special endeavors, when each of these could do more harm than good. It is usually not in the multiplying of activities but in the simplifying of life that we experience the deepest satisfaction in Christ. This does not mean that we necessarily do less; rather, it means that what we do is centered in Christ so that He has the preeminence. “But one thing I do” (Philippians 3:13). “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed” (Luke 10:41–42). “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).
Growing in holiness simplifies our lives, unifies our lives, and satisfies our lives. No more of the broken cisterns; we are drinking at the pure river of the water of life. No more of the fleshpots of Egypt; we have the bread of life. The praises of other people fall on deaf ears; we want only the approval of God. The wealth of this world means little to us, for we rejoice in the riches of grace in Christ Jesus.
Growing in holiness, however, does not mean that we lose the good things of this world; rather, it means that we receive them back and enjoy them more. It is God “who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). Abraham placed Isaac on the altar and, in the will of God, died to self, but Abraham received him back to enjoy him in a deeper way than ever before. Jesus enjoyed playing with the children, feasting at the table, watching the birds and the lilies, and doing the everyday tasks of life. True holiness (which is wholeness) touches all of life, not merely a part. The Pharisees fasted twice a week and accused Jesus of being a glutton and a drunk. But their fasting was not an exercise in holiness; consequently, their fasting was sin. Our Lord’s feasting was in the holy will of God because all of His life was controlled by that will. Holiness always involves wholeness—the whole person, the whole of life. “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The Pharisee could never be happy because he was not whole and his life was not whole. He was trying to patch his old garment with new cloth, and the seams would not hold. Jesus wore the seamless garment of holiness—wholeness—and walked in the joy of the Lord.
There is no holy living apart from the holy Son of God, the holy Word of God, and the Holy Spirit of God; they go together. The Spirit of God reveals the Son of God through the Word of God. If you have a hunger for holiness, then you will read the Word of God, meditate on it, and make it a vital part of your life. In the Word of God you will see the Son of God, and when you do, the Spirit of God will transform you so that you become more and more like Him. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NASB). Moses did not get a shining face by looking at himself; he spent forty days gazing at the glory of the Lord. Stephen looked away from the hateful faces of his persecutors and gazed upon the face of Christ, and his own face radiated the glory of God (Acts 6:15).
There is no escaping the fact that the men and women of God in the Bible and church history dared to reject the comfortable piety of their age and abandon themselves to experience the holiness of God. They hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and God satisfied them. They paid a price, but the reward was worth it. No more could they return to the broken cisterns—even the religious cisterns—once they had drunk deeply of the living waters. The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 were not persecuted because of their religion but because what they believed so affected the way they behaved that they became a threat to the religious conformists around them. After the Exodus Israel constantly wanted to go back to Egypt. They forgot the slavery; they remembered only the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But while they were looking back, Moses was looking ahead, and he “persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27). Moses had a different appetite from that of the people, and therefore he had a different ambition. No wonder holy men and women of God have always been persecuted by the religious crowd and utterly rejected by the people of the world. They “faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them” (Hebrews 11:36–38). And all because they hungered and thirsted after righteousness.
If we are to reign in life and live like kings, we must have God’s righteousness, imputed and imparted. God’s grace reigns in our lives through righteousness (Romans 5:21). Jesus Christ, our High Priest, belongs to the order of Melchizedek—“king of righteousness.” The prodigal son became a slave when he rebelled against his father and lived to please himself. When he returned to his father and submitted to righteousness, he experienced grace and began to live like a king.
All of God’s blessings are the by-products of His righteousness. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). “All these things”—such as food, clothing, shelter, income, husband, wife. When we live for God’s rule and God’s righteousness in our lives, then we enjoy everything else.
There is no shortcut to happiness or holiness. We must begin with hunger—a hunger for holiness, a deep desire to be more like Christ. God promises to satisfy this hunger, and it is our responsibility to seek to develop this appetite for the righteousness of God. We are what we eat. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”