Happy Are the Hungry and Thirsty

[0:00] Now, please turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. We have been going through the gospel of Matthew since November, or end of November, and we are now in the Beatitudes, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' Discourse on Righteousness, Matthew 5, verses 1 to 12.

[0:23] Let me pray for the reading and preaching of God's word. Heavenly Father, as we sang, do give us ears to hear and eyes to see.

[0:37] May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. O Lord, our rock and redeemer, instill in us as we hear you speak to us from your word and insatiable hunger for righteousness.

[0:59] Make us more like Jesus, our Lord. For in his precious name we now pray. Amen.

[1:11] If you are able, please stand to honor God as we read his word. Matthew 5, verses 1 to 12. I'll be focusing on verse 6 today, but I'll read all of 1 to 12.

[1:24] Verse 6.

[1:54] Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you, falsely on my account.

[2:26] Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is God's holy and authoritative word. You may be seated. In a now famous commencement speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005, the founder of Apple, he quoted the words from the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog, which was an American counterculture magazine that Steve Jobs read religiously as a college-aged lad.

[3:00] And the farewell word of this magazine was this. Stay hungry. Stay foolish. That's the concluding advice that Jobs gave these Stanford grads.

[3:14] Stay hungry. In other words, don't ever be satisfied. Stay hungry for more. Stay hungry for new ideas, new breakthroughs, new accomplishments.

[3:29] And this idea of staying hungry has a lot of currency in our culture today. A coach and motivational speaker, Marcus Hungry, has this popular video that's been put into many different kinds of montages, and it's been viewed millions of times.

[3:46] And it says this. Go ask any athlete, actor, musician, philanthropist. It doesn't matter. You ask anybody who is a champion. And the difference between them and their opponent is that they were more hungry for it.

[4:02] The slogan, stay thirsty, my friends. You guys have heard this before? Popularized, I think this was maybe in the 90s. Maybe in the 2000s. By a beer commercial.

[4:13] It says, stay thirsty. Stay thirsty in your studies, in your job. Keep pressing. Keep pursuing. The people of this world are hungry and thirsty for many things.

[4:25] And Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, verse 6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst. But the hunger and thirst that Jesus talks about is not about money, fame, or sex.

[4:41] It's not about staying hungry for research innovations or career breakthroughs. And the fulfillment of our dreams and aspirations. That's not what Jesus is talking about.

[4:53] Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The people of this world are never satisfied.

[5:05] The people who stay hungry in this world are not blessed or happy. There's another way we can translate the word blessed. Because they are not hungry for the right thing.

[5:18] It says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. To understand this, we're going to explore what righteousness means first. And then we'll talk about what hunger means.

[5:31] And then we'll talk about what being satisfied means. Because that's the promise. For they shall be satisfied. When we first started with the Beatitudes a few weeks ago, we observed some general patterns that I want to remind you of.

[5:42] The structure of the passage. We noted that there are eight Beatitudes. Because verses 11 and 12 are an expansion of Beatitude number 8 in verse 10. We know that because they have the same theme of being persecuted for righteousness sake.

[5:56] And because verses 11 and 12 start to use the second person pronoun. Your, as opposed to they, which is the form of the rest of the Beatitudes. So it's an expansion.

[6:08] This structure is confirmed by the repetition of the promise. There is the kingdom of heaven at the beginning and end of the Beatitudes. In verse 3 and verse 10. This is the only repeated promise in the Beatitudes.

[6:18] And it's the only one stated in the present tense. Which makes it stand out. So that serves to bookend the entire Beatitudes. And it confirms that there are eight Beatitudes total.

[6:30] We also noticed one more important feature. Here, both verse 6 and verse 10 mention righteousness. Verse 6 says, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[6:41] Meaning those who lack righteousness. But long for righteousness. And then verse 10 says, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake. Meaning those who already have righteousness.

[6:54] Who are full of righteousness. And therefore are persecuted on account of that righteousness. So this repetition of the word righteousness divides in half the Beatitudes.

[7:06] And you will notice that the first four Beatitudes all speak to the lack of something. The poverty. The poor in spirit. Mourn because you lost something.

[7:17] You grieve something. You're meek because you're not taking initiative and taking things to your own hands. You hunger and thirst for righteousness. While the second half all describe being full or overflowing with something.

[7:29] You are full of mercy. So you show mercy to others. You are pure in heart. You have an undiluted heart from which you can see with which you can see God. You overflow as a peacemaker because you have the peace of Christ.

[7:42] And you are persecuted for righteousness because you have righteousness already. So there's a logical flow to these Beatitudes. And that gives us a clue to the meaning of the word righteousness.

[7:55] In verse 10, righteousness does not refer to God's righteousness. Much like it says that we are persecuted on account of our righteous acts.

[8:06] Much like the prophets who went before us. So it's speaking of human righteousness. Righteousness is a key word in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew uses it more than any other Gospel writers.

[8:19] All of them combined actually. He uses it more than them. And most of those uses of the word righteousness occurs in the Sermon on the Mount. Later in chapter 6 verse 1, Jesus says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

[8:35] For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. So here again, the word righteousness refers to the righteousness that we practice. That we do, that others can observe.

[8:48] So this is not God's righteousness, but our righteousness. What then constitutes righteousness? Jesus summarizes it at the beginning and the end of his Sermon on the Mount.

[9:00] At the beginning he says this, I think I have this to show in Matthew 5, 17 to 20. Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.

[9:11] For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

[9:26] But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not enter. You will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

[9:38] Once again, righteousness is something that we do since it's compared to what the scribes and the Pharisees do. Examined in this light, righteousness means obeying the commandments of God.

[9:54] Obeying the teachings of God and teaching others to do the same. Righteousness entails the obedience, the observance of the entire revealed law of God.

[10:05] His scriptures. His word. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to keep all of the Old Testament laws in their original form.

[10:15] Just in case some of you guys have that question as I'm saying this. Because Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill them. Jesus has fulfilled the law. He is the key, the legend by which we are to interpret and apply all of the scriptures, including all of the Old Testament.

[10:33] As another preacher has used this analogy before of Jesus being the prism through which when the light of God's word is shown through it, it reveals the true colors, the entire spectrum of light.

[10:45] And that's how we are to interpret and understand and apply the word of God. And that's how Jesus functions. The key that brings together the New Testament and the Old Testament.

[10:55] And so Jesus reveals to us the law's true intent, its end, its purpose. And Jesus summarizes the law of God at the end of the Sermon on the Mount this way in Matthew 7, 12.

[11:10] So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. So it's the golden rule. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.

[11:25] That's the summary of the law and what righteousness means and what righteousness looks like. So if that's righteousness, then let's talk about hunger.

[11:38] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Hunger and thirst are sensations that involve two things. First, it's the lack of something.

[11:50] And second, it's the longing for something. You need both in order to feel hungry or thirsty. Right? I don't own a sports car.

[12:03] But I also don't have any desire for one. So I'm not hungry for sports cars. Right? So you need to have the lack of it, but also a longing for it. It's the physical need that our body has and then the signal that the brain sends, that you feel the sensation.

[12:22] It's both a lack and a longing. So likewise, hunger and thirst for righteousness means that, one, we don't have righteousness.

[12:33] We hunger for righteousness because there is a lack of righteousness in our lives. If you are resistant to that idea, let me show you from God's word.

[12:45] Romans 7, 18, Paul says, For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. Ephesians 2 says that we all were once dead in our trespasses and sins and were made by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

[13:02] In Genesis 6, 5, God's assessment of fallen humanity is this. The thoughts of his heart. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

[13:18] This is what we mean by total depravity or the pervasiveness of evil that taints everything that happens and everything that we do. We are not righteous. And if you think that you are righteous on your own, apart from Jesus, then you are satisfied with your own righteousness.

[13:37] You are not a Christian. One thing that a Christian cannot be is to be a person who is satisfied with his own righteousness.

[13:49] Maybe you're not a Christian, but you think that you are a pretty good person. You think that maybe you can make the cut. Let's measure ourselves now up against the standard of righteousness that Jesus teaches and expounds in the Sermon on the Mount.

[14:05] There's a focus on righteousness throughout the Sermon on the Mount. That's a key theme. And these are some of the things that Jesus says. Well, I mentioned to you, I read earlier from the whole passage, and we saw in verse 1 that Jesus goes up on the mountain to begin his teaching.

[14:22] And I mentioned to you a few weeks ago that that's not incidental. Jesus goes up on the mountain to receive, to give the new law of God, the new commandments of God, in the same way that Moses in the Old Covenant, in Old Testament times, went up on the mountain to receive from God and to relay the Ten Commandments to the people of God.

[14:39] And that's why Jesus, throughout the Sermon on the Mount, repeatedly says, You have heard that it was said to the people of old. But now I say to you, he builds this contrast between how the old saints had understood it or misunderstood some things, and then how the new saints, how we ought to live now.

[14:59] He's bringing the Old Testament to its intended end and purpose. He's fulfilling it. For example, the sixth commandment, the sixth of the Ten Commandments, says, You shall not murder.

[15:11] If you interpret that narrowly, I think we're probably all in the clear, I hope. However, Jesus says in Matthew 5, 21, According to Jesus, sinful, hate-filled, anger toward another person is murder within the heart.

[15:45] How many of us are guilty of that? All of us. Whether you have that kind of explosive, hot kind of anger, or the brooding, cold kind of anger, we have all had that.

[16:01] The seventh of the Ten Commandments says, You shall not commit adultery. Most of us are probably clear on that one, too. However, Jesus says in Matthew 5, 27 and 28, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery.

[16:16] But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent, has already committed adultery with her in his heart. According to Jesus, lustful glances of the eyes and the fantasies of the mind are already adultery of the heart.

[16:32] How many of us are guilty of that? Once again, if you're an able-bodied adult, probably all of us.

[16:43] The third of the Ten Commandments says, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Interpret it narrowly. That means to keep all the oaths that you have made in the name of the Lord.

[16:58] But then later, Jesus says in Matthew 5, 33, 37, Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all.

[17:10] Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil. Jesus says that our words should be so transparently truthful, that we should be characterized by such integrity in our lives, that a simple yes or no carries as much weight as swearing, taking an oath in the name of God.

[17:33] How many of us are guilty of letting our words fall to the ground with broken promises, lies, saying yes when we mean no or no when we mean yes.

[17:46] We can go down the list of the Ten Commandments, and if we are honest with ourselves, we have broken every single one. That is the sad state of our own righteousness.

[18:00] We have no excuse for self-righteousness, because there is no righteousness within ourselves, and that means all of us should hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[18:11] We must be people who are poor in spirit, people who mourn, people who are meek, and recognize our own spiritual poverty. However, despite this reality of our spiritual neediness, not all of us, in fact, hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[18:30] That's because, as I said, hunger entails both the lack and the longing. There is the objective hunger, the state of being hungry, and the subjective hunger of feeling hungry.

[18:41] The body's need for food, the brain's signal for food. Let me give you an illustration. One of the daily responsibilities of parenting is filtering what your kids eat and when.

[18:56] Because if you don't, they will eat candies and snacks right before their meals, whenever they want to, and then they will lose their appetite for the nutritious meals that you serve them.

[19:12] Because of the temporary blood sugar hike or whatever, you could ask the doctors in the midst how that works. The same is true in the spiritual realm. In Mark 4, 19, Jesus speaks of those who hear the word of God, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

[19:36] What are the cares of this world that are right now dulling your spiritual appetite? Are you weary with care about your job, about your bank account, the stock market, your health, your future, politics, and the state of this world?

[19:57] Are you consumed with cares about the clothing you wear, the food you eat, and what other people are thinking about you or saying about you? Are these things masking your hunger for righteousness?

[20:14] What about the deceitfulness of riches? Have you bought into the false promise, the lie that wealth can buy you security and happiness? What are these desires for other things that Jesus speaks of that can choke out the word?

[20:33] Is it desire for sex and romance, for fame and renown, authority and power? Maybe it's nothing so grand. Maybe it's something as simple and small as a desire for entertainment, for another show or a movie, video games, sporting events, reading the news, exploring new music.

[20:57] Seemingly perfectly harmless things can do a great deal of spiritual harm if they spoil our appetite for righteousness, if they displace our longing for the things of God.

[21:14] Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Most of us, thankfully, have never known desperate hunger or thirst, but let's try to imagine it for a few moments.

[21:28] Imagine being so dehydrated that your throat is parched and dried and cracking and your lips are cracked and your mouth is dry, you have a headache you're desperate just for a cup of cold water to slake your thirst.

[21:51] Or imagine being so famished, you've seen pictures of starving children online, you're emaciated. You would do anything for a loaf of bread.

[22:07] You're hungry. You feel the pangs of hunger. What would you do to satisfy their hunger? What would you stop at?

[22:18] You wouldn't stop at anything to get food and water in a situation like that. Nothing else in this world would take precedence over getting food. What? So let me ask you, do you hunger and thirst for righteousness in that manner?

[22:38] Are you diligently attending to the means of grace that God has given us to grow us in righteousness? Are you reading and meditating on the word of God as we were singing about earlier, which teaches us righteousness?

[22:52] Psalm 119 is full of admonitions about this. Think about whether you relate to the word of God in this way, as the psalmist does. I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules.

[23:05] I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Behold, I long for your precepts. In your righteousness, give me life. Your testimonies are righteous forever.

[23:16] Give me understanding that I may live. Seven times a day, I praise you for your righteous rules. Those are the words of a man who hungers and thirsts for righteousness.

[23:33] Are you devoted to the word of God? I will talk about this more when we get there, but Jesus' discourse on righteousness, his sermon on the mount, is structured to bring attention to the Lord's prayer in Matthew 6, 7 to 16.

[23:49] That's the structural center of the entire sermon on the mount. That's how important prayer is for our righteousness, for Christian obedience and discipleship.

[24:01] Are you devoted to prayer? Is your prayer life characterized by this hunger and thirst? Do you attend faithfully to the local church and its worship?

[24:17] Hebrews 10, 23, 25 says, that it is by meeting together and encouraging one another that we stir up one another to love and good works. In other words, toward righteousness.

[24:29] I'm speaking to the choir here because you guys are all here. If the worship gathering of the body of Christ promotes our righteousness, if the fellowship of the people of God promotes our righteousness, then those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will not miss the opportunity.

[24:52] Would a hungry person be too busy to find the time to eat? Would a thirsty person be too busy to find the time to drink?

[25:04] No, you'd put all the other priorities aside. Someone's talking to you and you're really hungry and you're really thirsty, you have to go get a sip of water. Hey, thank you. That's a very interesting story, but I'm going to go take a drink.

[25:16] If we're too busy to attend to the means that God has given us to sanctify us and to grow us in righteousness, then it shows we're not hungry and thirsty for righteousness.

[25:38] In John 4, Jesus says to Samaritan woman who is drawing water at the well, everyone who drinks of the water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

[25:49] The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Jesus is telling us what we should be thirsting for. In that same passage, some verses down, Jesus says, my food, when his disciples ask him, have you gotten food?

[26:09] Jesus says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Jesus says that we should seek righteousness even more than we seek food.

[26:22] How many days have we passed neglecting the pursuit of righteousness while still eating three square meals a day? I'm not saying that eating is important.

[26:36] I eat three meals a day. But just that our priorities are not right. This is one of the reasons why we as a church, as a whole body, observe three days of prayer and fasting once a month.

[26:50] This Wednesday, upcoming Wednesday, is the first Wednesday of the month of February, which means starting tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we are encouraging you guys to fast and to pray. If it has been a while since you participated or you've never fasted before, take this opportunity to fast.

[27:08] A typical fast is to abstain from food and or drink, usually food and then continuing to drink water. A 19th century, a South African pastor, Andrew Murray, describes fasting helpfully this way.

[27:22] We are creatures of the senses. Our mind is helped by what comes to us embodied in concrete form. Fasting helps to express, to deepen, and to confirm the resolution that we are ready to sacrifice anything, to sacrifice ourselves to attain what we seek for the kingdom of God.

[27:45] So then by fasting, we declare that our hunger for righteousness is greater than our hunger for food, that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

[27:58] So consider fasting for a meal or for a day or maybe for all three days and use that time to express your hunger for righteousness in prayer and the study of God's word.

[28:09] You can fast from things other than food also. Think about the question that I asked earlier. what are the desires for other things, the deceitfulness of riches, the cares of this world that are choking out the word of the gospel in your life.

[28:28] Ask yourself, is it social media, YouTube, dramas and shows? Maybe it's ESPN, video games, dating apps, shopping.

[28:41] Consider fasting for a time just to deepen your conviction, your resolution that seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness is first priority.

[28:57] Brothers and sisters, hungering and thirsting for righteousness is the way to be blessed. I've talked to you about this, that blessed can be translated as happy or fortunate. this blessedness or happiness cannot be found apart from God.

[29:13] This is very important for us to get because everyone in the world is seeking happiness in some shape or form. Our country's declaration of independence has enshrined pursuit of happiness as one of the inalienable rights that God has given to humanity.

[29:27] This is what people everywhere are pursuing but they don't attain happiness because they're seeking happiness apart from God. True happiness can only be found in God, in being in right relationship with God, in living a life that is rightly ordered before God.

[29:50] So if you want to be happy, you must hunger and thirst for righteousness for they are the happy ones for they shall be satisfied. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well.

[30:05] Jesus said in Matthew 6, 33. So what are you hungry for in life? If people were to observe your life, your priorities, your decisions, what would they say you are hungry for?

[30:20] if we put anything ahead of God's kingdom and his righteousness then we will not be happy.

[30:32] For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul? This is why we as Christians are in the gospel preaching business.

[30:46] It's good work to indeed give hungry people food and to give thirsty people water. That is the way to obey God's command to us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

[30:58] We need to do that. We need to serve our neighbors in those ways. But we also need even more importantly to show people how to satisfy their hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[31:09] righteousness. Because there is something worse than physical death. Eternal damnation. And there is something better than a long and healthy and prosperous life.

[31:25] Eternal life. At the heart of all the problems in the world is the lack of righteousness. righteousness. And that brings me to my final point.

[31:40] What does it mean that we shall be satisfied? The word satisfy here means to feed or to fill to satisfaction. It's speaking of sufficiency.

[31:52] Enough. Plenty. Abundance. And that's a delightful word for a hungry soul. So if you feel that hunger and thirst for righteousness, if you are aware of your lack of righteousness and you long for more of it, then this is the good news.

[32:08] You shall be satisfied. But how does that happen? We can answer that question if we first figure out who is doing the feeding.

[32:22] Notice the verb. It's in the passive voice. You shall be satisfied. We are not the ones who are doing the feeding.

[32:34] We are not the ones who are doing the filling. We are not feeding ourselves. We are not filling ourselves. We are being satisfied by someone else. And this is an example of the divine passive when the passive voice is used without a subject explicitly stated.

[32:50] It often, the Bible, refers to God himself who is doing the satisfying and the filling and the feeding. As Psalm 107 verse 9 says, for the Lord satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things.

[33:07] This is the good news that we proclaim. Because Jesus could have said, blessed are the righteous. But instead, Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

[33:25] Jesus could have said, for they shall satisfy themselves. But instead, he says, for they shall be satisfied.

[33:41] We don't need to be full of our own righteousness in order to be satisfied. The only people who are disqualified from this promise, from this blessing, are the self-satisfied, the self-righteous, but if you, in this room right now, you recognize your own lack of righteousness and you are longing for it, you're hungry for it, then you are blessed, for you shall be satisfied.

[34:11] As I've been saying for weeks in this series in the Beatitudes, there is a present and future dimension to this promise. The kingdom of God is already here, but it is not yet fully here. That's why there's the first and the last promises in the present tense, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, but all the promises in between are in the future tense.

[34:28] They shall be satisfied. But we know that there's a present and future dimension to this righteousness as well, because in verse 10 we have righteousness, because we're persecuted because of the righteousness that we have.

[34:42] So we already have righteousness, but yet we do not have righteousness, and we shall be filled, satisfied. In theological terms, this is referring to God's justification and his sanctification.

[35:00] Justification is God's once for all judicial pronouncement, his declaration of sinners as righteous. This is not something that we earn or accomplish, it's something that God by his divine authority pronounces, and we read about that in Romans 4, 3 to 8.

[35:18] For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed in God, believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

[35:31] And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

[35:45] Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Do you notice the word blessed there?

[35:59] Who are the blessed? Not those who have never done lawless deeds. They don't exist. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven. Who are the blessed?

[36:12] Not those who have never sinned. Only Jesus can claim that. but those whose sins have been covered.

[36:24] Those against whom God does not count their sin, but rather because of our faith in Jesus, because Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

[36:35] Because Jesus stood in the place of sinners, he was condemned in our place so that we can be declared righteous. The ungodly, the unrighteous declared righteous.

[36:46] that's the blessing of the gospel and the promise of the gospel so that instead of hearing the guilty verdict that we should have heard, we hear the verdict of emancipation and freedom, righteousness, innocence, forgiveness.

[37:05] righteousness. That's how it says in 1 Corinthians 1-3, Jesus became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

[37:21] That's the once for all act of what God has done, that's justification. And those whom God justifies, he also surely sanctifies. The Bible speaks of sanctification in a two-fold sense.

[37:36] It speaks of how we are once and for all immediately at the time of conversion consecrated to God to belong to him, to be united with Christ through faith.

[37:47] That happens once and for all. But it also speaks of the ongoing sanctification, progressive sanctification, how we become more and more like Christ. We grow in our holiness and in our righteousness.

[38:03] How does that work? I'll close with a couple analogies to explain to you what that looks like. I've used this one before, the first one.

[38:14] You can think of righteousness of Christ as this oversized hand-me-down clothes that you receive from your older brother Jesus. It's yours.

[38:28] He's given it to you. You already have it. You're already wearing it. No one can take that from you. You've been declared righteous. You belong to God.

[38:39] You belong to Jesus. You've been united with him. And yet, the rest of our days, we grow into that and fill that righteousness out more and more.

[38:51] Justification and sanctification. You can think of it also as marriage, which is not inappropriate because we are described as the bride of Christ. If you think about a newly wedded couple, things are a little awkward at first.

[39:11] Think about it, right? A man and a woman who have lived, I don't know, 20-something, 30-something lives, 30-something years, on their own, doing things that they want to do, running their schedules, eating things that they want to eat.

[39:28] And then they get married. And then you clash. Things are not so well aligned. But they are one.

[39:46] They are all married. That's a permanent reality. The covenant is real. And yet they spend the rest of their lives, the rest of their marriage, figuring it out.

[39:57] How to fit better together. That's what happens with Jesus as well. reason unknown to us, but clear to the sovereign grace and mercy of God, he has chosen his people, chosen us, to be his bride, to be the bride of Christ.

[40:20] And when we put our faith in Jesus, we are married to him. We are the bride of Christ. We already have the unbreakable covenant with him. We're justified.

[40:31] We are consecrated to him. And yet, the rest of our days, every day of our lives, we spend growing and being more and more conformed to his image, to his tastes, to his priorities, to his body, the body of Christ.

[40:49] So if you feel that you are not quite fitted, if you feel your profound lack of righteousness this morning, don't let that discourage you.

[41:05] You are no less the bride of Christ. Close with this hymn, a few lines from Charles Wesley's hymn, Jesus, lover of my soul.

[41:17] Just and holy is thy name. I am all unrighteousness. Vile and full of sin I am. Thou are full of truth and grace. And that's why he can satisfy us with his righteousness.

[41:30] Let's pray. Okay.