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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled” [Matthew chapter five, verse six]. I remember being in a third world country in Africa several years ago. We had to drive a long way off the main highway to get to an area that in Africa is called the bush country.
That means a place where they don't have running water. There was no electricity and the people lived in mud huts. And for the first time in my life, I saw people that were really hungry. It had not rained for over a year and most of the people only ate one meal a day. And that meal was a bowl of corn mash.
That leaves an impression on you that you never forget. And when I look at passages like Matthew chapter 5, verse 6, sometimes I think about that image in my mind. And I can't help but think about us. You know, when we're just a little bit hungry, we say, “I'm starving to death.” Or when somebody asks us, “Are you ready to eat” or “Are you hungry?” we say, “Well, kind of, but kind of not.”
These people understood what it was like to be hungry in a physical sense. And Jesus is using this to illustrate spiritual desire, hungering and thirsting after righteousness. That's not just a mild craving. That's really genuinely, intensely feeling a desire to do what's right and to be right in the sight of God.
You see, the Sermon on the Mount is filled with simple illustrations. It uses the most simple situations in life to teach the most profound truths. And what could be simpler than the feeling of hunger and the feeling of thirst? These are feelings that all of us can relate to. God made us to feel hungry.,He made us to get thirsty. So every time that we feel these cravings, we ought to be reminded of the fact that we're made of the earth. Genesis 2 verse 7 says that we are made from the dust of the ground. That means we're dependent on food and water and we're dependent on the God who made these things and gives these things to us.
So when the Bible says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness,” we ought to look at that illustration and ask ourselves the question: How does this apply to us spiritually?”
Well, in the first place, the feeling of hunger in the physical body is regular. We feel these things every day. We get hungry and we get thirsty. Now there are times, of course, where you're sick or something bad has happened and you don't feel like eating or you don't want to eat. But for the most part, we have these recurring feelings in the physical body and we make sure that they're fulfilled. We make sure that we're fed.
As a matter of fact, Ecclesiastes 6, verse 7 says, “All the labor of a man is for his mouth.” We make sure that we're fed if we make sure of anything at all. So these are recurring appetites that we have in the physical realm. And Jesus is saying that we ought to have that same kind of regularity in our spiritual life.
We ought to hunger and thirst after righteousness on a regular basis, not just one day a week or one time a week. Sometimes people go to church on Sunday morning, they hear a sermon, and they think that because they have been“fed spiritually,” that that's enough, that they don't need anything else for the rest of the week.
Now imagine somebody doing that in the physical realm. Imagine somebody saying, “Well, I only need to eat once a week.” That'd be preposterous. And yet, that is the life, that's the practice of too many Christians today. Think about all the time, all the talk, and all the planning that we put into our meals. If we took just a fraction of that time and effort and put it into Bible study and doing good for the Lord, think about what kind of difference that would make in our spiritual lives.
The Bible says, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness.” We ought to be hungering and thirsting after those spiritual things, not just after physical things. You know, in this same book, in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, Jesus said, “But seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”
That's what we ought to be seeking and seeking first. And here He uses this illustration of hungering and thirsting. So I'm saying, first of all, that this craving for spiritual things ought to be regular. It ought to be daily. The Bible says in Psalm 1 verse 2, the good man's “delight is in the law of the Lord
and in his law he meditates day and night.” In Hebrews chapter three, verse 13, the Bible says that we ought to “exhort one another daily.” In Luke chapter nine, verse 23, the Bible says that we should take up our cross daily. Christianity is a daily affair, just like eating and drinking are daily activities in our lives.
Secondly, unlike the physical body, our spiritual appetite is a choice. You don't make up your mind to tell your body that you're going to feel hungry or thirsty. Your body tells you that you're hungry or that you're thirsty. The soul doesn't work that way. You have to make the choice to desire spiritual things.
You have to learn to have an appetite for spiritual truth and spiritual kinds of activities. So the Bible shows that we must learn to do this and we must choose to do it. In first Peter, chapter two, verses one and two, the Bible says that we ought to desire the sincere milk of the word that we may grow thereby.
We have to desire it. We have to learn to love it and to desire it. And the more that you read the Bible and the more that you do the will of God, the more that you worship, the more that you fellowship, the more that you talk to other people about the Bible, the more that you do good for your fellow man, the more you enjoy it and the more it becomes a part of you inside.
And if you go for a while without doing that, you feel empty on the inside, just as in the physical realm. If you go for a while without eating, you feel empty. If you are truly converted to Christ, and you grow as you should in the Christian life, when you don't engage in those spiritual activities for a time, you feel empty on the inside. Something is not right on the inside.
The Bible says if you'll hunger and thirst after righteousness, you will be filled. Number three, I want you to think about how strong these physical cravings are when you're really hungry, when you are truly thirsty. Think about the intensity of those physical desires.
When you read the Bible, you're reminded of this because you find that people will do things that otherwise they wouldn't do if they're really hungry. The Bible says in Proverbs 6 verse 30 sometimes a man will steal because he's genuinely wanting something to eat. You even read in some passages about cannibalism because people were starving to death. Deuteronomy chapter 28 and second Kings chapter 6, also the book of Lamentations chapter 4 and 5 talk about that atrocity in the Jewish people because they were so hungry. So, if a person is really hungry in a physical sense, he will stop at nothing until he eats. And in a spiritual sense, if a person really hungers and thirsts after righteousness, he won't let anything stand in his way of filling that desire.
He won't let a worldly desire, he won't let some kind of temptation, he won't let some kind of earthly care or worry get in his way. He makes sure that he is satisfied. He makes sure that he is fed spiritually, whether that is praying, going to worship, studying the word of God, doing good to others, teaching other people the gospel—whatever it is, he'll make sure that he is filled with that righteousness.
So it has to be an intense feeling and it will be a strong feeling. Sometimes it may not feel as strong as it does at other times because there are always going to be times where it's more intense and you feel it stronger at some times than you do at others. But at the same time, it is an intense craving for the Word of God.
It's not just some kind of mild little feeling of hunger. It is truly hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Now remember, when we talk about righteousness here, we're not simply talking about the Bible. We're not simply talking about the Word of God. That's part of it. We ought to crave the Bible. 1 Peter 2, verse 2: “As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby.”
There are a lot of passages like that in the Bible. As a matter of fact, Job made this amazing statement in Job 23, verse 12. He said, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth”—that's the mouth of God. Job said, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.” He said, I crave the word of God more than I do my meals [Job 23 verse 12].
“Righteousness” in Matthew chapter 5 verse 6 is more than just the Bible. This is doing right. This is being right in God's sight, and we ought to crave that. It's not just saying that we ought to study the Bible and know the Bible. It's putting it into practice. It's making that such a part of our inward being that we crave it like we do, and even more than we do, our necessary food.
Sure, it's a great thing when Christians say, “I want to be fed the Bible; I love the Bible.” But this is more than that. This is a person saying: I want to be righteous, I want to do right, I want to be a good person. You have a craving for that. And then, of course, you listen to God, you pray to him, you get regular exercise in a spiritual sense by teaching the lost, by helping the needy, by worshiping God, by participating in the church however and whenever you can.
So why is it that Christians sometimes don't have this kind of craving for righteousness like they ought to have? You know, when we see somebody in the physical sense who’s not hungry or who's not eating and they haven't eaten for a while, we said, “Well, you need to eat.” When we see somebody who doesn't have an appetite, we know that there's something wrong with them physically.
And when we see people who are Christians that don't really have this desire and this craving for righteousness, we know that something is wrong. And one of the reasons why this occurs is because they're choking. You know, when somebody's choking on food, they don't want more food. They don't want to eat anything.
Well, the Bible says that Christians sometimes are choking on worldliness. And the Bible says this in Luke chapter 8, verse 14. Jesus talks about those who go forth as Christians, and they are “choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.” This is one of the reasons Christians don't desire righteousness like they should.
They have too much in there. They have too much stuffed into their minds and into their hearts. They have too much worldly pleasure in their mind and in their soul. And there's not much room for the word of God to get in there. And so there's not much of a hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
Now, the ironic thing about that is that those kinds of worldly pleasures will not fill the soul. They will not satisfy. Do you remember one man who talks about his experience in trying to have a meaningful, fulfilling, satisfying life, but he never could do it until he came to grips with the fact that the only way that you can have true satisfaction in this life is to fear God and keep his commandments?
Yes, it is the book of Ecclesiastes. You notice that it talks over and over again about being empty. The word that's used in the King James Version is the word vanity, and that means emptiness. The writer says in this book that he tried everything. He tried all kinds of entertainment, he tried riches, and he tried the things that money can buy, and he said he never could find that satisfaction.
And that is still true to this day, but most people don't listen to that even when they hear it. Most people have to learn it the hard way, that earthly pleasures do not bring you the satisfaction that you think that they will. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.”
People who are hungering and thirsting after earthly enjoyments will never be filled. They will never be satisfied. Augustine said it this way many years ago. He said that our souls are restless until they find peace with God. And if there's any word that describes this generation of people, especially here in America, it is that people are just restless.
They go from one pleasure to the next. They don't even know what they're doing, except the fact that they want to have as much fun and get as much out of life as they possibly can, and they ignore the Creator who gives them the life that they enjoy. This is sad. Jesus says that the way to have a meaningful life—the only way that you can live a truly fulfilled, satisfying, and happy lif—is to hunger and thirst after righteousness.
That way you will be filled on the inside instead of feeling empty. Why is it that people have so much money? Why is it that people have so many enjoyments and so much entertainment today and yet they're depressed? They're sad. They're empty on the inside. It's because you cannot satisfy the soul, which is spirit, with physical things only. You just can't do that. It takes hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And then, and only then, you will have a meaningful, fulfilled, and satisfying life.
Let's go to another Beatitude. It is in Matthew chapter 5, verse 7. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” I'm going to use the Bible in the best way that I know how to use it, because the Bible is its own best commentary.
The best interpreter of the Bible is the Bible. And I'm about to read to you a lot of verses of Scripture that really amplify what we've just read. Mercy is one of the key virtues in life. In other words, if you put the virtues and the characteristics that God wants us to have in our lives up at the top, in a tier, so to speak, then you would put this up toward the top. We know that the first two are these: Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. That's Mark chapter 12, 28 through 31.
And here's another way that the Old Testament basically says the same thing. It's found in Micah chapter 6. In Micah chapter 6, the prophet is asking the question, How do I please God? Do I give him this? Do I perform this act? How do I please the Creator? And the answer is in Micah chapter six, verse eight. Listen very carefully to what's said here. “He has showed you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?”
There are three things that he mentions here. First of all, do justly. In other words, be a just person. Be a fair person. Treat other people like you would want to be treated. It's basically the same thing as the Golden Rule, as we describe it, in Matthew chapter seven, verse 12. Be a just person.
Number two, love mercy. It doesn't just say to show mercy. It says that we ought to love mercy. Love being merciful to other people. And that's what we're going to talk about in just a few minutes. And then the third thing that he mentions is to walk humbly with your God. If you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, obviously, you will walk humbly with Him, and you will listen to, and you will obey Him.
Now, let's look at another passage back in the Old Testament, which is very important to remember when you talk about the place and the importance of mercy in the lives of Christian people. Hosea, chapter 6, verse 6. God said, “For I desired mercy.” And that doesn't mean that God is showing mercy here. It says that God desires mercy. That is, He desires mercy in his people. He wants, He desires for us to be merciful to each other. God said, that's what I want. That's what I desire. And he says, I desire that you show this mercy, that you have mercy in your hearts and not sacrifice.
Now, he is not just totally throwing sacrifice or worship out the window. He's not saying that I don't want you to worship me anymore. He's saying that mercy in your heart is more important than the worship on the outside. This has to be the meaning because of what he says in the rest of the verse. Listen to it. “And the knowledge of God”—God wants the knowledge of Him, that is the awareness and the conscientiousness about God—“more than burnt offerings.” There's a comparison made here. So in Hosea chapter six, verse six, you have a very important thing said about mercy, and we know that it's very central to the teaching of Jesus because Jesus quoted that two times to the so-called Bible scholars of his day. And we'll get to that in just a few minutes.
Now, then let's turn to the book of Matthew. And what I want to do is to use the book of Matthew as a commentary and an explanation to help us to apply Matthew chapter five, verse seven, which says, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” What does that mean? So I want you to notice the different ways that Jesus explains this.
And in so doing, I want you to remember that this must be very, very important in the Christian life because Jesus says so much about it just in this one book of Matthew. So let's get started. In Matthew chapter 5 verse 38, Jesus said, You have heard that it has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
That's justice. But in verse 39, Jesus said, “But I say to you, resist not evil, but whoever shall smite you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue you at the law and take away your coat, let him have your cloak also. Whosoever shall compel you to go a mile, go with him two.”
So, this is a very misunderstood and misapplied passage. I'm not going to get into the details about it here. I'm simply going to make the point right now that Jesus is showing that there's more to life and there's more to being a good person than just recognizing justice. There's a place for mercy and these Jews—and this is very important to remember—these Jews had completely left that out of their life.
All they wanted was justice. And they had forgotten about mercy. So let's look at Matthew chapter 5, beginning in verse 43. “You have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy.” Well, the Old Testament didn't tell you to hate your enemy. As a matter of fact, you read about just the opposite of that in Exodus chapter 22 and other passages.
And we'll get to that later as we explain more about the Sermon on the Mount. But Jesus said there's a place for mercy. He says in verse 44, :But I say to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you and do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you.”
Now let's go to Matthew chapter 6 verse 14 and 15. Jesus said in Matthew 5 verse 7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Well, is the opposite of that true? If we don't show mercy, are we going to receive mercy? Listen to Matthew chapter 6. Verse 14, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Let's look at Matthew chapter 7 verse 12 because this is the passage we mentioned just a little while ago, and this is called the Golden Rule, and it's based on the idea of showing mercy and being fair to other people. In Matthew chapter 7 verse 12: “Therefore all things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even so to them: For this is the law and the prophets.” In other words, this is the essence of the law and the prophets. And these Jews needed to learn that. Again, remember that the book of Matthew is written primarily with a Jewish audience and a Jewish readership in mind. And these Jews were short on showing mercy to each other. That was one of their biggest sins and one of their greatest sins.
Now, in Matthew chapter 9, we read the story of Jesus healing a man that was sick of the palsy. And the Bible says that the hard-hearted Pharisees thought in their hearts, well how can he do this? How can he forgive a man of his sins? And so they were very critical of what Jesus did.
Here's what Jesus said. In Matthew chapter nine, verse 12 and 13, about their attitude, he said, “They that are whole do not need a physician, but they that are sick; but go and learn what that means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” What had these Pharisees and these scribes, who supposedly knew so much about the Bible, what had they missed?
What had they neglected? It was the simple aspect of mercy. And Jesus said. You need to go back and read Hosea chapter six, verse six. You need to go back and study your Bible. You have not even learned to show mercy to each other. And that was, as we said, and is one of the most fundamental, foundational virtues in living for God.
In Matthew chapter 12, we find that the scribes and Pharisees again criticized Jesus disciples because they thought that Jesus’ disciples had violated the Sabbath day, which they didn't. But I want you to notice what the Bible says down in Matthew chapter 12 verse 7. Jesus said to these scribes who were so critical, “If you had known what this means: I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.
They were not merciful people at all. All they wanted to do was fault-find. They were very unforgiving. They were very vindictive people and Jesus shows them how in this passage as well, that they had overlooked exactly what the Bible says. And in Matthew chapter 12, as a matter of fact, in verses 8 through 13, He taught them, as far as the Sabbath day was concerned, that they were showing more mercy to animals than they were to human beings.
Now, then let's go to Matthew chapter 18. In this chapter, Jesus is talking about a brother doing wrong to another brother. What do you do in that kind of situation? How do you handle it? And he gives us steps as to how to deal with it in verses 15 through 17. But then Peter had a question, and this is where the element of mercy comes in.
In Matthew, chapter 18, beginning in verse 21, Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? And Jesus said, not until seven times, but until seventy times seven.” If you read Luke chapter 17 verse 3, you have to remember that the element of repentance is involved in this. The forgiveness is based on the repentance of a person. Again, that is Luke chapter 17 verses 1 through 3. But the Teaching about mercy here is the same.
He tells the story in verses 23 through 25 of Matthew chapter 18 about a servant of a King who owed the King a lot of money, an enormous amount of money, and he couldn't pay it. And so the King said, well, we're going to sell you. We're going to sell your property. We're going to sell your wife and your children until I have enough for that payment to be made. And that servant begged for mercy. And the king was gracious to him. He forgave the debt. That same servant who had owed his king this huge amount of money had someone who owed him a very small amount of money and he demanded payment from that man.
The man begged him for mercy and he said no. And he threw that man into prison for a much lesser sum. So Jesus is pointing this at these Jews and he's telling them you better be merciful to each other if you want God to be merciful to you. Now let's go to Matthew chapter 23. Here's one of the most powerful statements made in the Bible about mercy, and not only about mercy, but about the place and the importance of these virtues in life.
There are some things that are more important than others. Matthew chapter 23 verse 23 plainly shows this. He says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin.” In other words, they would make sure that even if they had a little herb garden, that they would give a tenth of whatever they produced from that little crop to God.
There's nothing wrong with that. That was right. But he said, You've omitted the weightier matters of the law. Now, notice that expression. There were weightier matters of the law. In other words, the law of Moses had a lot of teaching, but there were some commandments that outweighed others. Now that's really not any different from what Jesus said in Mark chapter 12, 29 through 31, where he said that the first or the greatest of the commandments is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
If this outweighs the other ones and the second, of course, to love your neighbors yourself. But notice what he said. These weightier matters of the law are: judgment. Now that is not the day of judgment. That is justice. That is the same thing that we read about back in Micah chapter six, verse eight, and you read about it in many other verses. In other words, justice is a central, it is a fundamental, it is an extremely important part of living for God.
Number two, mercy. And number three, faith. Jesus says these ought you to have done and not to leave the other undone. So, if we ask the question: How important is it for me to be merciful in my life? Jesus said that this is a weightier matter of the law.
In Matthew chapter 25 verses 31 through 46, we have a sobering reminder of how important it is to be merciful to other people. Now, we said that showing mercy to other people includes a lot of things. It means that you forgive other people of their trespasses. Yes, we saw that. It means to do good to other people who need our help. And in Matthew chapter 25 beginning in verse 31, Jesus said that this will come up in the day of judgment.
Matthew 25 31 says, “When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He shall sit upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And he will set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on the left. Then shall the king say unto those on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” So these are the saved. At the day of judgment, these are the people who are saved. What have they done? The Bible says in verse 35 that Jesus will say to them, “For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.”
And then Jesus tells us what will happen to people who did not show mercy to others. The Bible says in Matthew chapter 25 verse 41 that He will say to those on his left hand, “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
So it is a very serious topic that we're talking about, showing mercy to other people. Then there's a well-known story that we must mention in Luke chapter 10, beginning in verse 25 and going through verse 37. This is the story of the Good Samaritan. There was a man that went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and thieves robbed him and left him half dead after they'd beaten him.
The Bible says that there was a priest that came by and just ignored him. A Levite came by and neglected to do anything for him. In other words, they did not show mercy. But the Samaritan did. He helped this man. He went above and beyond the call of duty. And verse 37 shows that the key point of that whole story is showing mercy to other people.
Now let's look at James chapter 2 verse 13 as another passage to help us to understand what Jesus said. James chapter two, verse 13 says, “For he shall have judgment without mercy, who has shown no mercy, and mercy rejoices against judgment.” All these passages make it clear that showing mercy to other people is very important and very serious.
Oftentimes as Christians, we have a “To do” list. We have things that we need to get done today. As far as a Christian's “To do” list in virtues is concerned, mercy ought to be up at the top. It ought to be a primary concern in your life today. “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.”
Thank you for listening to my God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
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