Matthew 5:6 states, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
The tragic event of the Donner Party starving in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the winter of 1846-1847 is a picture of how hungry people can get. They not only ate anything leather, including their shoes, but ate the bodies of those who died. In the days of Elisha there was a terrible famine in Samaria (II Kings 6:25). In the verses following, two women agreed to eat their children—one child was eaten.
Jesus understood what physical hunger was like. Matthew 4:1-2 says, “Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.” He refused to turn the stones into bread as the devil suggested, but chose to live “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
It is more important to hunger for the Word of God than physical good. Even when the devil was gone, Jesus did not command the stones to become bread to prove He was the Son of God. He had heard the “voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). He let His ministering angels feed him angel food (cake?). It was from His own recent experience that He could say, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
God warned Amos of a spiritual famine to come. Amos 8:11-12 says, “Behold the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor of thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.” That could be referring to the days of Jesus, or of Paul, or even today. It certainly will be like that the day after the rapture.
It seems that some people will never hunger for righteousness. In Revelation 9:15-21, four angels will be loosed to slay a third part of the men on earth. Even in that time, verse 21 says, “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”
In the true account of Lazarus and the beggar we see Lazarus in hell begging for his brothers, still alive, to have another chance to repent (Luke 16:30).
I hope today you are hungry and thirsty for righteousness—and filled. I believe we need a daily hunger and thirst for righteousness and infilling, as much as we need physical hunger and thirst and filling.
“Are you longing for the fullness of the blessing of the Lord in your heart and life today? Claim the promise of your Father; come according to His Word, in the blessed old-time way. He will fill your heart today to over-flowing. As the Lord commandeth you, ‘Bring your vessels, not a few.’ He will fill your heart today to over-flowing. With the Holy Ghost and power.” (Lelia N. Morris, 1912). What will it take for this world, America, our churches, our schools, our government, our families to hunger for righteousness? Nuclear War? Friend, are you Hungry?
