We are made to know God and only in knowing him can we ever find satisfaction. We have what Pascal called a “God-shaped void,” which no created thing can fill, try as we might. Only God can fill it and, consequently, we only truly become who we were created to be, and only truly find peace and joy, fulfillment and satisfaction, when we find God.

Is America Losing Our Virtue, as one book title asked? Polls released by the Barna and Gallup organizations show a steady decline in the conduct of Evangelical Protestants. Shrinking minorities believe in moral or religious absolutes. Surveys of marital infidelity, divorce, premarital and extramarital sex, lying, cheating, stealing and drug use among professing Christians now fail to distinguish behavioral differences between professing Christians and the rest of society.

The problem, says David Wells, is that the church is “exhibiting too little of the moral splendor that Christ calls it to exhibit.” It is “not morally resplendent.” It is too concerned with worldly success, with marketing strategies, with organizational and managerial efficiency, and with therapeutic “feel good” messages. “It is mostly empty of real moral vision, and without a recovery of that vision its faith will soon disintegrate.” Yet, as Wells points out, the “key . . . to Christian effectiveness in the postmodern world” is a recovery of the church’s “moral seriousness.”

The disciples of Jesus are not to be like or live like the rest of the world. Jesus maps out the difference in the Sermon on the Mount. We are to be characterized by a different ethic, superior to the external and superficial legalism of the scribes and Pharisees, instead being perfect like our heavenly Father (5:17-48); a different piety, not practicing our righteousness ‘before men’ but in secret (6:1-18); different ambitions, laying up treasures in heaven not on earth, and seeking first the kingdom of God (6:19-34); different interpersonal relationships, living by the Golden Rule (7:1-12); and a different foundation, building our lives upon the words of Christ, as upon a rock (7:13-29), and as a result, being a sanctifying influence, like salt and light (5:13-16).

These virtue attitudes confound our natural expectations. They call us to a lifestyle that is different from the world.

Everyone wants to be happy. The Lord Jesus understood that and began his sermon where he found every human being: longing for happiness. That longing is not wrong. God made us for that happiness and for that satisfaction and for that fulfillment of life, which is another way of saying the same thing. He put that longing for happiness within us. And the evidence that he did can be found in every single human life, in every epoch of human history, everywhere you look.

This great reversal is the great point of the beatitudes. When Jesus says in the middle of this sermon, “Do not be like them,” (6:8) he has summarized the climax of this sermon. Over and over and over again he is going to compare the behavior, the life of his people to the life of those around them whether pagan or religious. And he going to say your life cannot be as theirs. His people are to be different, different in every important way. He begins the sermon by saying that they are to look for their happiness in very different places than either the pagans or the falsely religious around them. They are those who believe that the true blessedness and fulfillment of life is found not only in different things than the world thinks, but in the opposite things.

As we resume our study of the Beatitudes, a normal question arises: Can such an old word (beatitude) still be of use to modern Christians. I realize that some may fail to see the relevance, but I believe that whatever word you use, yes, this concept still makes sense. Just because it is an old word, does not mean that it is no longer useful. In fact, you can change the meanings for “blessed” to:

• favored;
• happy (Calvin actually uses this term);
• congratulated;
• prosperous . . . or whatever, but the concept remains the same. Our lives either have this blessedness, fullness, satisfactory quality, or they do not. We are either happy or miserable, favored or ‘unlucky,’ envied or mocked. God lays out for us the path to blessedness. Last week, it was described in terms of: spiritual poverty, mourning, and meekness. Today, we’ll see 4-5 additional notes of blessedness.

#4. The supreme blessedness is yours if you hunger and thirst for Righteousness. “Up to this point Jesus’ description has been mainly negative. His disciples are aware of what their souls lack: they understand their poverty of spirit, they mourn their sin, and they are meek or humbled by their spiritual condition. This positive attribution of hunger and thirst flows from the negative: knowing what they lack, they long to be different. By using the food metaphor Jesus likens one’s desire for righteousness not to a passing interest or occasional concern.”

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