Hungering and Thirsting for Righteousness | Matthew 5:17-20

Show Notes

Episode 857: 
In this episode, we explore Matthew 5:6 and what it truly means to hunger and thirst for righteousness. We unpack how Jesus challenged the Pharisees’ view of righteousness, fulfilled the law rather than abolishing it, and what that means for salvation, grace, and everyday faith. Along the way, we connect Scripture to real life, culture, and even classic rock, encouraging listeners to see the Bible’s lasting relevance and transformative power today.

What is The Bible Guys?

Whether you’ve been following Jesus for years or you’re just starting to ask questions, there’s a seat for you here.

Join Jeff and Chris for honest conversations about Scripture, faith, and the everyday stuff we all navigate. With humor, personal stories, and plenty of back-and-forth, The Bible Guys explore what the Bible says and how it connects to your life.

Subscribe, bring your questions, and get to know the Bible one conversation at a time. Head over to TheBibleGuys.com for more information!

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Good morning, morning, we talk through. Good morning. Good morning to you and you and you man. Hey, good morning everybody. It's it's only the second day of this week. Yeah, I forget it might not shake it up a little bit. Wow, I'm pretty well to it. I'm feeling wild, get right to it. Hey, wild cherry Life Savers? Did you No? I don't even like Life Savers really I used to as a kid. I'm not a candy person. Yeah that's right. You aren't a candy person. Yeah that's weird. Yeah, which which is why we're friends. Yeah, right, because that leaves more for me. That's right. I never have to ask are you gonna finish that? Right? Right? It's true, especially chocolate. That's the thing I don't understand about you. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I question our friendship over the chocolate. Hey, that you're not like I told you my experience. I don't know two people that don't like chocolate, and both of them are psychopaths. What are you saying I'm a psychopath? Yeah? Like, did you ever hear Hannibal Lecter mentioned that he liked chocolate. No, no, no, what I'm saying. So there's one he liked liver. So anyways, anyways, I might be making a leap there. Okay, Hey, so you know I don't mind chocolate, Like I can eat chocolate with like like peanut m and m's. If I were to buy a box of peanut lem and M's in a movie theater, I get about halfway through it, I'm like, I cannot eat anymore. But I can only eat the first half because it has peanuts in it. Ow I get to the end of a Snickers bar, I'm like, whoa wow. But like, but halfway through it, I'm fine. I walked through. And if there's chocolate, I have to taste it. I have to have it. I don't know why. It's just I mean, I will say this very very strongly. If it's like a Hershey's kiss, absolutely not even a chance while I eat that just pure chocolate. No, I just ate five her She's kisses last night, back to back to back. So funny. Yeah, No, I just don't do it. Okay, Well, sorry, all right, So, hey, Jeff, can the misery of your life? It's great, it's great. All right, Hey, listen, we are launching into a segment the Desiree is calling Hot Takes Showdown, and this is supposed to be where we debate. Yes, we're supposed to commit. Okay, okay, so uh so here we go. She said, do you agree with this the statement? The statement debate, stand your ground, no middle ground. Here we go. The first statement, is this cursive should still be taught? Yes, absolutely, it should. It should be. I think you think so too. Yes, wow, I thought you would say no. No, I should be. Yes, it is. It is a it is a lost art and and honestly it is. Uh, it's it's there's so many things about it. It's elegant, it's quicker to write, it is. Yes, it's you know, it's interesting because people have signatures in cursive, and yet nobody writes in cursive anymore. So I think it's I think it's. Uh, I do I like I'll write in cursive. I'll write in cursive. If I'm writing you a note, I'll write in cursive and not print it. Yeah, because you can't read my printing? Oh is that why? Yeah? I have decent penmanship, but I still like to do cursive when uh, when I write a card to my kids, I do cursive just to show them that cursive exists. Yeah, and can they still read it? I think so? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Another credit, Well, because I think they were they were. The cutoff was after them, Okay, so I think they all learned it right then there's a cutoff. So yeah, I mean the generation alpha they I don't think they'll be able to recognize cursive. I don't know. Yeah, I like it. I like how it looks. I like it's I think it's easy to read. Yeah, even if they yeah, poor penmanship. Cursive you usually read the beginning and the end of a of a word anyways, and incursive there's usually distinct beginnings and ends. Write your first letter and your last letter stand out. Even if there's kind of scribble in the middle, you can usually and that's how you read. Is that so that's part of it? It's easy to read. The bottom line is is it not that hard? Why do we get rid of it? It's not that hard. We are standing our ground. Yeah, let's go, people pick up the pace. I don't know why did we get rid of raise the bar because everybody's typing and so we don't need to write cursive I think, so I guess, okay, it's it's it seems silly to me, okay. And then the second one is it's okay to quit things you start. Absolutely it is absolutely yes, hate quitting things I start. It depends on what liz. I hate it, but I do it. I just hate it. Why. I don't know. I always feel like less of a man when I don't finish the things I start. Every time. Let me let me give you an example. So I, uh, I am the worst at this. Somebody said, somebody said, hey, let me talk you to run in the marathon, and I was like, great, I'm gonna commit to it. I went public with it in front of everybody, in front of thousands of people. Then I started training for it, and then sometimes someone hurt my back and I was like, oh, thank God, thank god that I hurt my back. I don't have to run this race. And then what I realized was like two years later down the road. And I'm not kidding when I say this. My old church used to work at. Running was a big thing, and everybody on staff was a large staff. There were like twenty avid runners, twenty where they were like, running's my thing, man marathons. And by the way, I'm not against runners. I'm just against runners running longer than your body was intended, right, because you know, a half a marathon. I think your body can handle a half a marathon. But every single people some people's bodies. Right. You ever see me running, the cops are tasting me. Right, right. But anyway, bottom line is is twenty out of twenty had surgery. Twenty out of twenty. Yeah when he out of twenty had surgery because I. Am, and then they die their body falls apart. Yeah, they all had surgery, back surgery, leg surgery, knee surgery. It was just terrible. There's a whole vein of medicine called sports medicine. Yeah, that's right, right. And and there's a whole segment just most of the orthopedic surgeons and stuff. It's for runners, right most. Well, our good friend Dave Wilson he can't walk upright because he blew his knee out in the first game he ever played at in college football and he's been on bone on bone on his knee and now he can't straighten up. Well, we need to fix it. Well, I got a pocket knife. Maybe I don't know if I'm good at it, but it might be. Yeah, give me a new knee. Yeah yeah, so yeah. So I think the if you ever asked me, what is the thing I wish I could change the most about me, it's this. I start a million things and I and I don't always finish them, really, and there's nothing in me that says that's okay. Everything in me says just finish it. I would rule the world if I could finish all the stuff I start. And I think it's the adhd thing in me. Oh hey, look at the squirrel. Squirrel right always there's another thing that catches my attention and it's really exciting. And so I start tons of stuff. Home project. You can ask my wife. I'll start home projects and I can't finish them. I've already made fifteen trips to home depot. I get frustrated. It's time to call somebody to come and help me fixing a car, same thing, and I just feel like I should, I should be able to do it. I just don't. And either I don't or I can't. There's a ton of those things. I probably have twenty five unfinished projects right now. And nothing in me says that's okay. Yeah, yeah, well not just at home. I'm not at home, just projects are writing. I'm writing a couple of different things. I'm writing three things right now. None of the three are done. I just put a deadline on one of them recently. Deadlines. I like deadlines. Deadlines get me moving, get me motivated. But yeah, I've got so many loose ends and it drives me nuts. Huh. I don't think it's okay. I will say real quick, because I know we're coming up on our time. One time, I tore the whole bathroom apart down to the studs and I and I had friends that I know come in and just do bits and pieces. And it took forever because it was like mostly free and uh, but the bathroom was still undone after like a year, and slowly but surely we just got it put together. And so I kept on telling my wife. I was like, She's like, let's just hire somebody, and I said, no, no, no, I'll get it done. I promise. And then I went to Cuba and I came back and it was done done, and she had hired somebody when I was in Cuba. Good and she had planned the whole thing. So I'm like, how much do we own this guy? But thank god he was a good guy and charges a small amount. That's funny. So well, hey, speaking, I'm strong, I wouldn't say. The one thing it is okay to quit thing is if you're if you're eating a meal that's too big to finish. Oh yeah, right yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and uh that's what we're talking about. It's being hungry, hungry. We both went for it, okay, very good. Yeah yeah yeah. I like it as a weak transition. No, no, no, we got no. I thought it was it got us there, clever. Yeah, it was better than our normal lazy transition. Yes, that's right. So in Matthew chapter five, we just read in verse six, God blesses those who hunger in thirst for justice or righteousness, for they will be satisfied. And then the premise of this entire series is Jesus sets up these eight or nine things that God blesses at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, and then peppered all throughout the Sermon on the Mount our illustrations about those things, and one of them is this idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness. Oftentimes, the people in Jesus day looked at the Pharisees as being like super righteous because they obeyed all the laws of Moses, and so they measured they equated righteousness with law. And so here in Matthew chapter five, verse seventeen, Jesus says, don't misunderstand why I've come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I claim to plish their purpose. And I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God's law will disappear until its purpose is achieved. So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of heaven. But anyone who obeys God's laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of heaven. But I warn you, unless your righteousness is better than the righteousness of the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven. Woo about righteousness. So on one side, yesterday we said, God doesn't say I'm going to reward your righteous living. He said, I'm going to reward your desire true bless you. And now Jesus says, you're not going to go to heaven if your righteousness doesn't exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. Yeah, so some people can some people can misinterpret that, right, Yeah, so some people misinterpret that as saying Jesus is saying you have to live right in order to obtain heaven. Right, But he's talking about the law being the thing, the vehicle that gets you to heaven. Right. Right. If you think the law is what gets you to heaven, you have to keep it perfectly. That's right, that's right. That's what he's saying. He's saying, the righteousness of the law is not what gets you to heaven. Right, and so's and he's actually he's actually saying, listen, I've come to accomplish the law. I've come to fulfill the law. I'm not doing away with it, right, just because I'm giving you new rules, and you know, I'm giving you a new commandment love one another. And Jesus, you know, you know, he's the sacrifice, that is the ultimate sacrifice. So he gives us a new Covenant because of that right, that the brand new promise of salvation everything else. So so in a lot of ways, the Old Testament, some of the Old Testament laws, they don't apply to us today because Jesus has fulfilled them. You know, if there's a prophecy that's just been lingering unfulfilled for seven hundred years, Jesus fulfilled that, right, He's accomplished that. There are some things in the Old Testament where Jesus came to complete He put a bow on it, and it's done with. Right. But he's not saying, but he said, I'm not coming to do away with the law, right, because anything that's not fulfilled, anything that I have not fulfilled or accomplished, it will exist all the way to the ends of the earth. Right, So all the things that Jesus didn't come to satisfy, all the stuff in the Old Testament that still exists that aren't satisfied by Jesus, by his you know, salvation, What am I saying? Just his fulfillment of salvation, prophecies, right, and everything else he's saying will still exist. But then he's really talking about the law and he's saying he's saying listen the law. You think the Pharisees are righteous, but you have to surpass them in order to get to heaven. So I just think that people will take this verse out of context a lot of times and think that they have to be righteous in order to get to heaven. But that conflicts with every other verse when God promises salvation, when God explains salvation. If you take all the verses about salvation, this verse cannot mean that. Yeah, well, this verse is consistent with what Paul says. So Jesus is saying in a few sentences. Well, Paul took several chapters in the Book of Romans to unpack. Right. If you think that the law can get you to heaven, the law is just a task master. All the rules are there to prove to you that you can't keep the laws, and so then the only thing we have to fall back on is God's grace. Right. And so I talked about this, you know, and I preached this at my brother's funeral in Psalm or in Roman seven. Even Paul says, the things I wish I'd do, I don't do, and the things I don't want to do I do. And he's talking about the law. In that whole chapter, he's talking about the law, and he said, oh, what a wretched man I am? Who can ever save me from this body of death? And he says, thank Goodness, only Jesus can. But then you turn to Romans chapter eight, verse one, the very next page, and he says, there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So if I'm going to try to earn it my own way, Romans chapter seven says, oh what a wretched man I am. And I just living in a body of death. I'm miserable all the time. Romans chapter eight says, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. How do I have my righteousness transcend the righteousness of the most perfect people on the planet At the time, the pharisees, not on my dime, It's on Jesus dime. Right. The Bible says that we are plunged into Christ, those who are in Christ. Jesus is that word, and it talks about we are in His righteousness. We're clothed. The Bible says, we're clothed in Jesus righteousness. And so my righteousness on its own can never measure up to the perfection of the law, let alone to how good the Pharisees were. But when Jesus gives me his righteousness and I possess him, he's in me, and I have him, then my righteousness. When God looks at me, he sees Jesus, and that's the only way any of us are getting in. It's through Jesus, and he unpacks it. So it's interesting, I just noticed this, by the way, so rate before this he goes, Hey, you guys are the salt of the earth. You're the light of the world. He'd already said he's the salt, the other the light of the world, but now he's saying, you guys, are you represent me? So he says, let your good deeds so shine before men, that they would see your good deeds and glorify your father, who's in heaven. Then he says, don't misunderstand why I've come. And then he says, I came not to get rid of the law, but to fulfill it. But if you're trying to fulfill it, there's no chance. And then from there on the next verses he talks about murder and anger. He talks about lust, He talks about divorce and marriage and social contracts. He talks about vows. He talks about revenge. He talks about how we should be treating other people in our communities and our enemies. He talks about generosity towards the needy. He talks about prayer. He talks about fasting. He talks about money. He talks about faith and worry. He talks about judging. He talks about getting your prayers answered right, all the religious stuff, He unpacks, everything attached to the law. He talks about through the whole rest of the thing, And every one of these goes and you can't do it on your own, and you can't do it on your own, and you can't do it on your own. And finally he gets down to the end in chapter seven, and he goes, so keep on asking, keep on seeking, You're gonna find it, You're gonna receive it. It's a faith thing. This is what he's trying to turn. He's turning it all on his head. He talks about all the religious things. They think, if they can just give enough money, if they can just avoid committing adultery, if they just don't kill anybody, they're going to be good, and Jesus goes, that's not enough, because if you are angry at somebody enough to kill, it's the same as killing him. If you lust after a woman, it's the same as sleeping with it. Right, he goes on down the line. He said, listen, you are not perfect. There's no chance for you if you think that you can keep the law. The whole rest of the message is just proving that the law isn't enough for you. You can't do it. And then he gets here to chapter seven and he goes, but listen, it's a faith thing. So he keeps tying faith is better than the law, and then he gets there and then finally goes, so let me just sumbon it, afraid, treat people the way you want to be treated, and then seek me right. And then he says in chapter seven, you can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate. So the other one says, if you're trying to trying to earn your way to heaven, you're not going to make it in the kingdom of heaven if your personal righteousness doesn't exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees. He said, but let me tell you how to get to him. It's a narrow it's a narrow way. Not the highway to Hell is broad, and this gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow, and the road is difficult, and only if you ever find it. And he's saying it's him. There's another point where Jesus says, I'm the gate right, I'm the door is what he says. So I don't think I'd ever realized it before that. The whole message is him proving that the law doesn't work. And then he gets in and he goes, I'm the only way. We get to John fourteen and he goes, I'm the way the truth in life. No one comes with Father except through me. And so Paul takes chapters and chapters and chapters to unpack these ideas, and Jesus in here he just takes three. And so his language is tighter, it's shorter, But when you compare it to everything else that we know in the Bible, he's saying the same thing. He's saying the same thing. You can't earn your way to Heaven. You need my righteousness. Let me prove it to you. Because even how you look at the letter of the law, I'm looking at the spirit of the law, and you can't get to heaven because you've broken all the law anyways. So then let me summarize it on this it's faith. I'm the only way. And then you're trying to figure out how to live. Just treat people the way you want to be treated. Were you surprised that I didn't sing Highway to Hell when you Yeah, it says, and then I just rested in the f I rested in the fact because I just knew that all of our listeners sang it in their minds. As soon as you said how it out, we all say. So there was a day when even rock stars knew the Bible. Right, that's right, that's right. You know, the whole world knew the Bible. You know he watched like an old seventies movie, did every Did I ever tell you what? You know? There? There was a there was a version we have a little bit of time here. Uh remember that movie Bedazzled with Brendan Fraser. I think I'm aware of it. Yeah, and Elizabeth Hurley, she played the devil. Well, there was an old seventies version with Dudley Moore, he was the guy, and rackel Welch was in it and everything else, and uh, anyway, it was it was there just a movie about Satan visiting this guy and trying to trick him into some wishes, okay, and anyway, so during this movie, now keep in mind, this is like a Dudley Moore at the time of the time, very popular, right, So this is a this is a well known movie. It's like in today's day and age, you have to be a Bible scholar to even get all the jokes in this movie. So like here he. Is the people in the room would have known it. Back in the seventies, people in the room would have known it. And so it just shocked me as I saw this old movie that he's making all these references about Moses and Abraham and the Seven Deadly Sins and he's you know, he's in and there's these one offs and he's not making them with the devil or with God. He's making them like with people, and they're all laughing and talking about it, and it's like and it's like it's like they're at a party and he's making Bible references. You know, Well, just like Joseph in the prison, And I'm like, is it true that our culture like this movie was written to be a good movie to make a bunch of money, And so everybody must have understood these things right, right, because our culture. You would have to understand the joke for it to be funny. Yes, and everybody would have understood it, yes, And now. No, no, I'm telling it. It's no wonder why they redid it, right, all the Bible jokes went away. Yeah. So anyway, well, just even in these seven in these three chapters, I mean, Jesus says, go the extra mile, people for going the extra mile. Yeah, that's right, right. Coaches will talk about going the extra mile. Drill sergeants to talk about going the extra mile. That one there. Treat people the way you want to be treated. The Golden rule. How many everybody almost everybody's heard somebody reference the golden doing to others as you'd have them doing to you. And don't judge, not judge, don't judge. Cheek, Yeah, the cheek, and those are just in these three chapters here that they still permeate a lot of culture. But yeah, the Highway to Hell thing, that's where the idea comes from well we did. We did a series that I'm not advocating for the song, right even Yeah, even the rock stars know the knew the Bible back then. That's right, that's that's what exactly right. But but anyway, the. So I hope our listeners learn the Bible better than rock stars. How about that? Right, I was gonna say. I had a thought, unless your unless your righteousness succeeds the righteousness of the rock stars, you're never gonna make it. That's right, that's right. Well, I had a fleeting thought maybe tomorrow. That's okay. Now I sang, that's what happened. That's what happened, all right. Well, hey, that is definitely our time. So thank you for tuning in and hopefully we will see you tomorrow on the bubble guys. H m hm hm h