Hunger after His Kingdom (2)
Christianity has nothing to say to the person who is completely happy with the way things are.
- John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire
If you open up a red letter Bible (those with Christ’s words printed in red) to the New Testament, you will soon come to the first large chunk of text in red: Matthew chapter 5 to chapter 7. You won’t miss it. This is a record of Jesus’ sermon which is known as the Sermon on the Mount. Straightaway you are given a good idea as to who Jesus has always wanted to speak to and what He has got to say. There is no ambiguity here.
Blessed are the poor… those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … and the list goes on (Mat 5:3-10). These were the kind of people Jesus was addressing then and the kind of people that even today He wants to speak to. One condition stands out among these people: all of them hunger and thirst for something and all of them want their needs met and their desires fulfilled. They have Jesus’ primary attention, as you can see how He started His sermon focusing on them. In fact, before we come to Matthew chapter 5, we read in Matthew 4 that right at the start of His ministry Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease among the people (Mat 4:23). And right after the Sermon, we find in chapter 8 Jesus again healed all who were sick who came to Him (Mat 8:16). What was Jesus doing? He was fulfilling the needs and desires of everyone He met. What He preached correlates to what He did. From the passage leading up to the Sermon and from the passage after the Sermon we can establish the context of the Sermon, and like I say there can be no ambiguity who Jesus wanted to speak to. He always gives His attention to those who hunger and thirst.
So how can we qualify to have God’s attention? Simply come before Him with our needs and desires. In fact God can smell them miles away and He will come running towards us.
The next question is what He will say to those who hunger and thirst. Did Jesus tell these people to be content with their lot? Did He accuse them to be too desirous to be good? Some would have us believe that Jesus would talk like that; the problem is that we can’t see this in the Bible. For each and every need and desire that He identified in His audience, Jesus promised a solution and a breakthrough: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…they shall be comforted…they shall inherit the earth…they shall be filled…and so on. Jesus wants our desires fulfilled.
Now we come to the most exciting part. Jesus said our desires shall be fulfilled, but did He tell us how they would come to us? Yes, you bet He did! It is by way of His Kingdom. Read Mat 5:3-10 carefully. You will notice that the specific solution stated for the first and last problem is the kingdom of heaven. It is like it envelops all the rest in between. This is the manner of preaching Jesus’ audience was used to. What Jesus means is this: all the solutions for the individual need raised are included in His Kingdom. Once we have the Kingdom, we have the solutions, we have all we desire – they are all found in there. That’s why Jesus went about preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and He commanded His disciples to go preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and commissioned us to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.
It is simple and beautiful. If you are not convinced, you need look no further than this verse:
But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. (Mat 6:33, NKJV)
Scripture Link: BibleGateway.com
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