The Sermon on the Mount Part 5

[HKHaugan]

The Sermon on the Mount Part 5

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled (Mt.5:6).”

The fourth blessing follows with a desire to find out more about how to rely on the Holy Spirit. You hunger and thirst for the best way to be right in every next moment which takes you into the Word that is right, Holy Scripture. The reason is that being right is the deepest need a sinner has. Some say love, faith, compassion are our deepest needs but if you think about it, when we love we want to love right, we want whatever we say or do to be right, to look right and to act right in front of others. It's called justification. We have this need to be justified, to have a reason, a right reason, for what we think and do. There the Holy Spirit opens up the way of being right with God, with self and with others. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of what it means to be right. With the Holy Spirit we are led to the Right Mind, the Right Heart and the Right Spirit. From Him we are led to thinking right which is believing right, having a right heart, that is discerning right and having a right spirit and that is speaking and acting right. The Scripture is God's manual for getting our lives right which is why Jesus sent the Holy Spirit after He was resurrected. From the Holy Spirit we learn what it means to have living relationship with the Lord. We get to know Him as He is and let Him be truth for the mind to believe, the way for the heart to trust and the life that renews our spirit to act for Him.

Being right, as Scripture says, 'righteousness,' is about one basic reality which comes from the Lord directly to each person and that is faith. It's one thing to believe. Anyone can believe but there's more. Do we trust what we believe? Is our heart into what our mind believes? Is there that willingness within, the experience of the Lord that we know within beyond words, that we can stand in the world around us and be a living disciple of Jesus? Then comes the third calling, to speak, to act, to put one foot in front of the other and walk motivated outside of the mind and heart. That is faith. That is the born again spirit motivated by the Holy Spirit to share the love of God with others.

Faith is walking into the unknown, the uncertainty of the next moment and obeying the Lord's call to be a witness, to give our testimony to share the Lord. It is the step of faith that runs through all of Paul's letters. This is why justification by faith is so strong a message for Paul. Faith is doing what the Lord, who we believe and trust to be the right One, the Righteous One, is calling us for. Faith in Jesus is being right. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Heb.11:1).” Belief and trust are internal. Faith is both internal an external. What we believe and trust, faith puts into action. Faith justifies our belief and trust. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God., not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared for us in advance to do (Eph.2:8-10).”

Look at Jesus and this sermon. What did He do? “When He saw the crowds He went up on a mountainside and sat down (vs.1).” “He saw the crowds...” Did it remind Him of the Hebrew people gathered at the foot of Mt.Sinai where Moses was given the Commandments (belief) and knew He was being led (trust) to teach the disciples in front of the crowd (faith)? He believed this was His moment. He trusted His Father's will. He went up the mountainside, sat down and began to teach His disciples and that was faith. He was the exact image of God being fulfilled in those teaching moments. He chose to believe. He chose to trust. He chose to act in faith.

To get a feel for faith being the action word, Hebrews 11 is its eloquent testimony. It enumerates the many past heroes of Hebrew history and what they, through faith in God, did for Him. They believed with their minds, trusted with their hearts and acted faithfully in their spirits. Faith is spiritual action. Faith is being right. When you get that urge to say or do something that would give honor to the Lord, do it. Don't end up kicking yourself because you didn't act. The promise is, if we hunger and thirst for faith, it will be given.