Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

What do you hunger and thirst for? I don’t mean food. What are the things you want to see in this world or in your life? When you think about the commercials you watch on tv what are they selling you? In almost every advertisement you hear or read they are trying to sell you happiness. Our world wants you to hunger and thirst for happiness. They want you to be filled with stuff and things. The truth is, happiness is not something to seek after. Things will not satisfy you. Look at this verse again: 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
When Jesus was speaking and teaching He knew what the human heart wants. Jesus knew He needed to say that happiness is not what we are hungry for, but what we get when we are filled.

So what does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness? It does not mean that you want to see justice in the world or people obeying. Those are both good things but this is a personal call to you as an individual, not to the world. Here is a great definition: the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is the man who sees that sin and rebellion have separated him from God. That person longs to get into right relationship of righteousness in the presence of God. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are those who want to be with Jesus. If Jesus is perfect and holy and righteousness, then being with Him and like Him is something to hunger and thirst for.

So what are you filled with to get happiness? Did you get this happiness on your own? Where did this righteousness come from? The thing we will notice about all of the Beatitudes is that they are a gift from God. They were nothing you could do on your own. What a joy to know that God knows how to fix us. We hunger and thirst for all sorts of things, but when we hunger and thirst for Him we can be filled. This is possible because of what He did in us through Jesus’ death on the cross, not something we did to ourselves.