This sermon is from the series PORTRIAT OF A CHRISTIAN from The Sermon On The Mount. It was preached by Pastor Paul Mims on Sunday, October 18, 2015 at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cherry Log, Georgia. You can hear this sermon at www.csbccl.org SECRETS OF THE SOUL Matthew 5:1-6 We had been dating for a couple of years and on spring break from college, Janice went with me to my home in Quitman, Georgia to meet my family. One evening, I took her out to eat in a nice restaurant in Valdosta. Then we drove out to Cherry Lake. Sitting there beside the water in a beautiful sunset, I told her of my love and how I had always dreamed of a soulmate like her. I asked her to share my life and ministry and placed on her finger an engagement ring. We prayed together and committed our lives to whatever future the Lord would have for us. Janice was not like the girl that was proposed to by a guy beside a beautiful placid lake. The boy said to her, I am not rich. I do not have a big home. I do not have a lot of property. I do not have a Rolls-Royce and a big bank account like Johnny Green. But will you marry me because I love you with all my heart? That girl said, I love you too, but before I answer, tell me more about Johnny Green. This is essentially what Jesus is talking about in this beatitude. It is all about the soul s desire. This beatitude, like the others, has two parts. The first part is I. THE INSATIABLE LONGING Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Jesus is using a comparison of the body s need for food and water to the soul s need for God.
The longing of the soul is just as demanding as the body s hunger and thirst for food and water. Why is this? That is the way God made us. One day, Janice had a chance meeting with a woman and they began discussing spiritual matters. The woman indicated that she lived a totally secular life. Then Janice said to her, What do you do with that big hole in your heart? The woman then was startled and said to her, How did you know? The French writer, Pascal, said there is within all of us, A God-shaped void. He means that there is a part of us that can only be completed by God. Augustine said essentially the same thing: Thou made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it rests in Thee. What about this God shaped void in you? All around us we see a spiritual famine. People are trying to fill that void with all types of pleasure that satisfies the body, but does not satisfy the soul. What do you do when the soul is not satisfied? Just as our need for food and water is a continual drive within us, there is a continuing longing for the satisfaction of the soul. The unsatisfied soul has lots of secrets about the ongoing search. Some pretend to have found what the soul longs for and keeps secrets about that, and the search goes on. Jesus met a woman in Samaria who was searching. He and his disciples had stopped at Jacob s well for a drink of water. Along came this woman to draw water for her water pot and Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw. He said to her, Go call your husband and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no
husband. Jesus said to her, You have correctly said, I have no husband: for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband; this you have said truly. (John 4:13-18) Think of the longing in this woman s life. What were the secrets in her soul that she never told anyone about? She hoped that she would find fulfillment in her first husband, but disappointment came. For some reason he did not meet the deep desires of her soul, nor did she meet his. The same was true with the second husband, the third, the fourth, and the fifth. She gave up and was living with a man who was not her husband at the time Jesus encountered her. But when Jesus offered her Living Water she found what she had been looking for all of her life. The secrets of her soul were the unexpressed longings that could not be satisfied in her previous searches. After the feeding of the 5000, the multitudes continued to follow Jesus. He said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him the Father, God has set his seal. (John 6:26 27) Jesus was saying to them, You are not seeking the spiritual truth is that I am teaching, but you just want something else to eat. Then Jesus probed them about their spiritual hungers and said to them, I am the bread of life; he who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet do not believe. All that the father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given to me I will lose nothing, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him
will have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:35 40) Perhaps you have heard it said, You are what you eat. This is true on the physical level because the way we eat affects our health and our body shape. Our self-concept comes largely from the way we look and the way we feel. This is greatly affected by what we eat. The same is true on the spiritual level. The food with which we feed ourselves spiritually shows up in the quality of our lives in terms of mental and spiritual health and our usefulness to the kingdom of Christ. Spiritual food for the soul must be of the most nutritious kind for if we eat spiritual junk food we shall be malnourished. There is so much spiritual junk food that is offered to people as an answer to the longings of their souls and they are taken in by these deceptions. But Jesus said, Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. What is this righteousness that he is talking about? Some people try to answer this with a lot of austere don ts. But the don ts don t get it. Some people try to satisfy the hunger with a lot of do s. But the do s don t do it either. This is what the Pharisees did to try to please God. They did a lot of good things, but they were not the right things. They had much religious form and a great dedication to it, but they did not reach God. And Jesus said, Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. This is a mind blowing statement. They were keepers of the Law the 10 Commandments. They amplified these 10 Commandments into over 3000 religious laws and duties that they had to adhere to every day. You would think that God would be pleased with this. But it was all outward display of their own works which could not satisfy the righteous demands of a Holy God. Likewise, we can go through the motions of the Christian life. We can attend church every Sunday, give our tithes, read our Bible every day,
and say our prayers every night, and still be like the scribes and Pharisees. If there is not that insatiable longing for God deep in our souls that is not satisfied by the living bread and water, we have missed it all. The righteousness that Jesus is talking about is a right relationship with God through Him. It is a faith love that transforms the believer into a disciple of Jesus. II. THE BLISSFUL SATISFACTION The disciples who were listening to Jesus as he gave the Sermon on the Mount heard him say something like this: O the bliss of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. As you read the Beatitudes you might think that Jesus is talking about different groups of people, but he is actually describing the progression in a person s life who comes to him. The encounter begins by a person who is poor in spirit sees his spiritual poverty and mourns over the marred image of God within himself and then takes on the gentle nature of Christ and in this fourth progression has a deep hunger and thirst for a different kind of life than he has known before, which is life in Christ. The promise is that the person who hungers and thirsts like Jesus is talking about is satisfied in his or her innermost being. It is interesting that the hunger and thirst does not end with the satisfaction. This is because it is a continual desire. We, at first, hunger and thirst for a relationship with God through Christ on an eternal basis, and then when we are in Christ, we hunger and thirst for more and more of God on a daily basis. Just like we have to have food and water each day, we have to have our soul food each and every day. God has designed that we have corporate worship once every seven days. That is why he created the church to give us instruction and sustenance in our daily walk. This is also why he invites us to worship him daily through Bible reading and prayer. Perhaps you have seen the saying on a church sign, Seven days without worship makes one weak.
Can you identify with the psalmist who said, As the deer pants for the water Brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1 2) O God, you are my God; I shall seek you earnestly; my soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for you. In a dry and weary land where there is no water. As I have seen you in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because your loving kindness is better than life, my lips will praise you. (Psalm 63:1 3) The apostle Paul said, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord... So that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7 11) The bottom line is: If you want it - you can have it. Or, you can stay the way you are. Henry Scougal in his book, THE LIFE OF GOD WITHIN THE SOUL OF MAN tells of the conversion of George Whitfield who in the 1700s was an early founder of Methodism. Whitfield was a student at Oxford University in England where he met John and Charles Wesley. He had tried to satisfy the needs of his soul by doing good deeds to the poor. But one night he lay on his bed with his arms outstretched and he envisioned Christ on the cross saying, I thirst. Whitfield prayed with just two words which he repeated over and over again. I thirst, I thirst, I thirst, I thirst, I thirst. He was converted to Christ and became a preacher and what we know as The Great Awakening in England. Can you envision what Jesus did for you on the cross? Can you hear him saying, I thirst. Now if you thirst for him, can you say deep within your soul I thirst, I thirst, I thirst? If you can, you will be satisfied!
PRAISE BE TO HIS NAME!