Matthew 5:6: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” When we live optimally, we have a deep need for righteousness. A need like hunger or thirst would cause one to say, “I must have righteousness or I die!” This heart reads Matthew 7:1-4 and immediately understands that they must judge themselves before they can assist others in rooting out their sins, consistently engaging in self-examination with the mirror of Scripture and prayer. See Matthew 7:1-4: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?” We are quick to play pretend at seeking righteousness, calling out such sins as judgmentalism or hypocrisy, subduing these gives us greater opportunity to indulge those secret sins we enjoy. We make vain attempts at snuffing out little sins while neglecting the great sins which fuel them, and more disastrously neglecting the singular pursuit of God.
Matthew 5:6 Meaning
Ah, and there is the critical point, in seeking righteousness, we ought not to be fleeing from sin so much as we are running towards Christ.
Paul says it well in Philippians 3:12-17: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.”
If we only run from sin, we shall only go as far as seems necessary to escape what sin we can perceive. If we earnestly pursue all that is in Christ, we shall not stop our marathon till we have crossed into glory. It is simple, but also very difficult. Difficult because our pride gets in the way. Difficult because we have shunted God off to a small corner of our lives, neglecting His presence and prerogative over our entire existence. We think that faith is part of our lives, but the clear testimony of Scripture is that faith is our life.
We are not looking for God because we doubt that He is there, and we do not feel the need for Him. We turn to God as a last resort. We turn to God to alter situations. We want revival all around us. We want our neighbors to act right, for our churches to grow, for the culture to clean itself up, but we feel no great need to clean ourselves up. We are doing all right on our own.
The pangs of life are there to goad us towards the obvious acknowledgment that we are not alright on our own. We struggle at work, or at home, or both, but those are realms apart from the influence of God, we think. God is at church, in my devotional time; not in the boardroom, not in the living room.
Of course, we know in our heads that God is in all these places, in every place at all times, but our hearts have not gotten the message yet. So, in many parts of life, we live as though we were dead. Revival sees us come alive in every arena of the day-to-day. That appears dangerous in a world where faith is often seen as weakness, and morality as a burden.
Here is what I am driving at: revival changes us, our lives from the heart outward. Revival begins with a soul sincerely appreciating its need to become holy as God is holy. I do not think very many of us earnestly, consistently, persistently yearn for that. Why? Here are three reasons,
We Do Not Know That God Is Holy
We know those words, but we do not know their meaning. We do not see the wonderous, awesome glory of the perfect perfection of the Triune God. We do not esteem the holiness of God as something most excellent and worthy.
We Do Not Know That We Are Not Holy
In Christ, we have been granted the status of holiness before God because the holiness of Jesus is assigned to us. Yet, we are not holy; we are in the process of becoming holy. We do not see that the effects of remaining sin are ruinous, we do not feel the grief of the Holy Spirit as we go on driving the nails of our sins into the Lord we claim to love.
We Are Not Patient
We want to be there now, not soon, right now. We pray for a season, and then give up and move on. We see numbers at meetings dwindle, and we decide it is not worth it anymore. We do not have the heart of the persistent widow or of the patriarch to wrestle with God until we have won the blessing we seek.
Revival is God’s to give; we cannot call it down, and we cannot raise it. We can only ask, and keep on asking. We can ask in expectation of receiving, as revival is in line with the explicit will of God for His people. It is for His people that revival comes; you cannot return life to someone who has not been alive. Those souls need awakening, Christians need reawakening; the two often occur at the same time.
I wish we would stop calling our evangelistic meetings revivals. We should pray they become revivals and awakenings, but unless the Lord pours out His Spirit, they are simply evangelistic meetings. I do not want the terms revival and awakening to be cheapened to something we put on. I think it is important to remind ourselves that there is something else, a higher level, and fuller experience, that is possible only by God’s blessing. Perhaps that will spur us in seeking to be revived again. Ah, but this is merely the wishful etymological opinion of one author.
Terminology matters, but changing how we talk is nothing if we have not changed our walk. Are we focused on spiritual vitality? If our sermon is earnest, convicting, and rich in the Gospel. Pastors will be physicians of our souls, diagnosing conditions and prescribing medicine for the heart. Our fellowship will be pointed, honest, and engaged. Our outreach will be urgent. Well, if all of this becomes true even without a special dispensation of the Holy Spirit, we must surely gain a more abundant life.
Our Father in Heaven does not deny us such excellent desires. Our Lord abides with us as we abide in Him, just as the life of the tree is in its branches. The Holy Spirit ministers to us according to the will of the Father and the Son. So, then we have every reason for confidence that the desire of revival will be satisfied even as it is promised. True, we might not see the outward spectacles, or the mass movement, or the sudden awakening within, but we shall see our sanctification advanced.
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