Part 4 of BLESSEDR: A Study of the Beatitudes
October 11, 2026
Glynwood Baptist Church, Prattville, AL
James Jackson, Pastor
[Title Slide]
Good morning! We are continuing our study of the Beatitudes—the promises of blessing we find in Matthew 5. And our memory challenge is still on! The stickers are still available, and some of you are getting really close. So let’s review. The verses will be up on the screen.
[REVIEW MATTHEW 5:1–12]
[scroll the beatitude slides when we get to each one]
So the fourth Beatitude is Matthew 5:6:
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
You may have noticed the title of today’s sermon: Stay Hungry, Stay Satisfied.
That sounds like an oxymoron—
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that puts two apparently contradictory ideas together. Jumbo shrimp. Seriously funny. Bipartisan.
And now we’re adding another one to the list: Stay Hungry, Stay Satisfied.
Because hunger and satisfaction are supposed to cancel each other out, right? When you’re hungry, you’re not satisfied. And when you’re satisfied, you’re not hungry.
So how can you stay hungry and stay satisfied?
Let me ask you something. How many of you have raised, or are raising, teenage boys? Or maybe you’re dating a teenage boy. Or maybe you ARE a teenage boy.
Here’s my question: Does it seem like they’re always hungry?
If you’ve ever had a teenage boy in your house, you’ve probably seen this scene play out more than once.
He goes to the refrigerator. He announces, “I’m starving.” He opens the refrigerator door and stares at the shelves for approximately five to eight minutes.
Then he turns around, leaving the refrigerator door WIDE OPEN, and shouts, “MOM! DO WE HAVE ANYTHING TO EAT???”
Now, at least two things are true in this scenario.
First, your teenage son is not starving. He may feel like he’s starving, but there’s a significant difference between being hungry and actually starving.
Second, you do, in fact, have things to eat in your house. The refrigerator is full of leftovers, takeout containers, snacks, and enough ingredients to make a perfectly respectable dinner.
Now, we can roll our eyes at our teenage sons, but I think there’s an important spiritual truth hiding in that familiar scene.
Just because we know we’re hungry doesn’t mean we know what will satisfy us.
You can stand in front of a refrigerator full of food and insist there’s nothing to eat. You can fill your stomach with junk food and still be malnourished. You can consume all sorts of things that temporarily satisfy your appetite without giving your body what it actually needs.
And what’s true physically is also true spiritually.
We have appetites. We have longings. We have desires. We spend our lives pursuing things we believe will satisfy us.
And it turns out the Rolling Stones were right. We try, and we try, and we try, and we try,
Success. Security. Relationships. Recognition. Pleasure. Comfort.
And still— we can’t get no satisfaction.
But what if we’re trying to satisfy our deepest hunger with things that were never intended to satisfy it?
I want to show you someone who discovered the difference between what he thought would satisfy him and what actually could.
Turn with me to Philippians 3.
In Philippians 3, Paul is teaching about what a follower of Christ should be hungry for. Let’s look at verses 4–14 together.
[READ]
This is God’s Word. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
[PRAY]
1. Your Diet: What Are You Hungry For?
When we read Philippians 3, do you notice all the things Paul used to think were important?
He was circumcised on the eighth day. He was an Israelite from the tribe of Benjamin. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was a Pharisee. He was zealous for the law. And as far as outward obedience to the law was concerned, he was blameless.
Paul had a refrigerator full of religious credentials. And if that’s all it took for a person to have right standing with God, he would have been golden.
But once Paul met Jesus, he realized that building a religious resume would never satisfy him. Everything he once depended on to make himself righteous became worthless compared to— highlight this in verse 8— the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus.
Paul looked at all his legalistic credentials and said, compared to knowing Jesus as my Lord, this is rubbish. Actually he said, “this is skubula,” which was a pretty crude word for dung or excrement.
Look at verse 9. Paul says he wants to be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
That’s the first thing we need to understand about righteousness.
There is a righteousness we receive.
We cannot make ourselves righteous before God by being religious enough, moral enough, generous enough, or obedient enough. The righteousness that makes us acceptable to God is something we receive through faith in Jesus Christ.
But there’s another side to righteousness.
There is also a righteousness we practice.
Received righteousness means we have a right relaitionship with God. Practiced righteousness means we do the things that please God. Matthew 5:16 says that people will glorify our father in heaven when they see our good works.
Don’t get the order confused. Our practiced righteousness comes after our received righteousness, not the other way around.
We don’t practice righteousness in order to be accepted by God. We practice righteousness because we have been accepted by God in Christ.
Jesus isn’t merely interested in declaring us righteous. He’s also interested in making us righteous—in changing the way we think, the way we live, the way we treat people, and the things we desire.
And that brings us to something remarkable about Paul.
Having discovered that righteousness comes through faith in Christ, Paul doesn’t say, “Well, that’s settled. I’ve got everything I need. I can stop pursuing God now.”
Just the opposite.
Look at verse 10. I love the way the Christian Standard Bible translates it:
“My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings…”
Wait a minute. Paul, don’t you already know Jesus?
Of course he does!
But he wants to know him more.
And in verse 12, Paul says he presses on to make Christ his own, because Christ Jesus has already made him his own.
Don’t miss that.
Paul isn’t pursuing Christ in order to belong to him. He’s pursuing Christ because he already belongs to him.
That’s the paradox of the Christian life.
The more we discover how completely Christ satisfies us, the more we want to know him.
Are you hungry for righteousness?
What does that even look like?
Now, before we move on, let’s talk about the third part of a healthy spiritual diet: the nutrition we require.
Think back to our teenage boy standing in front of the refrigerator. It’s not enough to make sure there’s food in the house. We also want to make sure there’s food that will actually nourish him.
And the same is true of our spiritual lives.
You might call these the five basic food groups of the Christian life.
Scripture. Are you hungry to hear from God through His Word?
Prayer. Do you crave conversation with God? Not just giving Him your wish list, or pulling the fire alarm when there’s a crisis. Intimacy with God. Time alone with Him.
Worship. Does your spirit long to lift up God? Are your regularly reminding yourself of who God is and why He’s worthy of our praise.
Christian fellowship. We weren’t designed to follow Jesus alone. We need other believers to encourage us, challenge us, and sometimes correct us. Do you hunger for authentic community?
Service. We don’t grow spiritually just by taking things in. We also grow by giving ourselves away. Do you long to give yourself to something bigger than yourself?
Now, none of these things earns us righteousness before God. Jesus has already accomplished what we could never accomplish for ourselves.
But these are some of the ways we grow in our relationship with Him.
And here’s the thing about a healthy diet: It’s not what you eat once in a while that determines your health. It’s what you consistently feed yourself.
Which brings us to our next question: Are you staying hungry? Let’s talk about your discipleship.
2. Your Discipleship: Are you Staying Hungry?
Paul is a great New Testament example of what it looks like to never be satisfied with where you are in your relationship with God. Even after everything he had experienced with Jesus, he could still say, “I haven’t arrived yet. I’m still pressing on.”
And in the Old Testament, Moses was the same way.
Go back to the book of Exodus. In 33:18, Moses makes a bold ask of God. He says, “Please show me your glory.”
Now, think about where we are in the Exodus story.
Moses had seen God’s power in Egypt through the ten plagues.
He had seen God’s glory when the Red Sea parted.
He had seen God’s provision in the wilderness. Manna from heaven. Water from a rock. A pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
He had spent forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai, where God gave him the Ten Commandments, written on tablets of stone by the very finger of God.
If anybody could have said, “I’ve seen enough of God’s glory to last me a lifetime,” it was Moses.
But that’s not what he said.
He said, “Please show me your glory.”
He wasn’t asking for another miracle to entertain him. He wanted to know God more deeply.
And that is the picture of being hungry and being satisfied at the same time,
The more Moses experienced God’s presence, the more he wanted God’s presence.
And Moses’ request to see God’s glory in Exodus 33 is especially poignant when you realize that it comes right after the episode with the golden calf.
Israel has committed a terrible sin. God has threatened not to accompany them into the Promised Land. And Moses has pleaded with God not to send them anywhere without His presence.
God has assured Moses that His presence will go with them.
But Moses wants more.
He says, “Please show me your glory.”
And God honors Moses request. In the next chapter, He causes His glory to pass in front of Moses, along with these words of assurance:
Exodus 34:6–7 ESV
6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
Moses asks to see God’s glory, and God responds by revealing his character. God reveals Himself as merciful, gracious, patient, faithful, and overflowing with steadfast love. But He is also a God who does not overlook guilt. His glory includes both His mercy and His justice.
Moses had seen what God could do. Now he wanted to know who God is.
And that brings me to a question for you: Do you?
I’m concerned that there are a lot of adults who may have a false assurance about their salvation.
Now, listen. I’m not trying to make anyone question a genuine conversion experience. And I certainly don’t want to minimize what happens at Vacation Bible School or youth camp.
Believe me, I’ve been involved in camp ministry for over thirty-five years. I used to keep track of how many weeks of camp I’d attended, and I stopped counting somewhere around 190. That’s more than three and a half years of my life spent at summer camp!
So believe me when I say that I know genuine decisions for Christ are made at camp.
But here’s what concerns me.
If the only evidence you can point to that you’re a Christian is that you walked down an aisle at VBS or youth camp when you were eight or twelve or sixteen, and decades later you have no real interest in knowing God, no desire to follow Jesus, and no concern about the direction of your life, then I think you have reason to examine whether that profession of faith was genuine.
Because a past decision, by itself, is not the same thing as a living relationship with Christ.
Think about our illustration of hunger and thirst.
What would you say to someone who told you, “Oh, I had a really big meal when I was twelve years old, so I’m good. I might have a bite to eat at Christmas and Easter, but beyond that, I’m just not hungry.”
What would you say to that person?
You’d say, “Something’s wrong! If you don’t eat every day, you die!
And I believe the same is true spiritually.
A living relationship with Christ produces a desire to know him better.
Let me switch up the metaphor for a munute. If you are like me, you don’t pay much attention to your insurance policy. Years ago, you signed up for an insurance policy. You learned what was covered, you pay your premiums, and that’s it. The only time you ever think about your policy is when something goes wrong and you have to file a claim.
Otherwise, you aren’t studying your insurance policy every day. You aren’t calling up your insurance agent several times a day just to get to know him better.
And I’m afraid we’ve confused assurance with insurance. Walking down the aisle and praying the sinner’s prayer was like signing the policy. Putting something in the offering plate is like paying your premium. If there’s a disaster, or an accident, or our life gets damaged, we call up our agent, Jesus. Otherwise, we never think about Him.
But salvation isn’t an insurance policy you signed when you were a kid. It’s a relationship with the sovereign king of the universe. Jesus isn’t just the agent you call when there’s a crisis. He’s our daily bread. And we need to look to him as our constant source of nourishment, satisfaction, peace, and pleasure.
An insurance policy is something you hope you’ll never have to use. A relationship with Jesus is something you can’t imagine living without.
Now, that doesn’t mean every Christian experiences the same degree of hunger every day. We all go through dry seasons. We all struggle. Sometimes our appetite for the things of God needs to be rekindled.
But there’s a difference between struggling with your appetite and having no interest in eating at all.
And that’s why I’m asking you this morning: Are you staying hungry?
Because it’s one thing to recognize that you’re hungry. It’s another thing to know what will satisfy you.
And remember, that’s where we started this morning. A teenage boy standing in front of a refrigerator full of food, convinced there’s nothing to eat.
But sometimes our problem isn’t that there’s nothing available to satisfy us. It’s that we’re looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places.
Which brings us to our third question:
3. Your Desire: What Is Your Source of Satisfaction?
Turn with me to John 4.
You probably know this story. Jesus is traveling through Samaria, and he stops at a well. A woman comes to draw water, and Jesus asks her for a drink.
And before the conversation is over, Jesus has turned an ordinary conversation about drinking water into an extraordinary conversation about eternal life.
Look at verses 13–14:
“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Did you catch that?
Jesus says there’s water that will satisfy your thirst temporarily. But there’s living water that will satisfy your deepest thirst forever.
And that’s true of just about everything this world offers us.
You can have a successful career, but sooner or later you’re going to wonder whether you’ve accomplished enough.
You can accumulate wealth, but there’s always something else you could buy.
You can achieve recognition, but eventually people stop applauding.
You can experience pleasure, but the experience ends, and you start looking for the next dopamine hit
And none of those things can satisfy the deepest longing of your soul.
But Jesus says, “I have something different to offer you.” Living water.
A spring of water welling up to eternal life.
And that brings us back to the question we’ve been asking all morning.
How can Jesus say in John 4 that whoever drinks the water he gives will never thirst again, while also saying in Matthew 5 that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed?
How can you stay hungry and stay satisfied?
Here’s the truth: When you come to Christ, your deepest need is satisfied. But your desire to know him is never exhausted.
When you find Jesus, it doesn’t mean you stop eating.
It doesn’t mean you stop drinking.
It means you stop looking.
You don’t have to keep searching for something else to make you right with God. Jesus has accomplished that through his death and resurrection.
You don’t have to keep looking for someone else to give your life meaning. You’ve found the One who created you and loves you.
In Philippians 4:11-13 Paul said,
Philippians 4:11–13 ESV
11 I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
That’s not a promise that Jesus will help us accomplish anything we set our minds to. It’s Paul’s testimony that Christ gives him strength to endure whatever circumstances he faces.
Paul can be physically hungry and spiritually content.
Because his satisfaction isn’t found in his circumstances. It’s found in Christ.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
There is a future dimension to this promise.
We experience the satisfaction of knowing Christ now, but we haven’t experienced everything God has promised us.
We still struggle with sin. We still live in a broken world. We still long for the day when everything wrong will be made right.
But that day is coming.
One day, we will stand in the presence of Jesus. Sin will be no more. Death will be no more. Everything that separates this world from the righteousness of God will be gone.
And the hunger for righteousness that marks the people of God’s kingdom will finally be satisfied in all its fullness.
Until then, we keep pursuing Christ.
Not because we’re afraid he might let go of us.
But because he has already made us his own.
Invitation
Did you come to church hungry this morning?
Maybe you’ve spent your life looking for satisfaction in things that were never meant to satisfy you.
You’ve pursued success. Security. Relationships. Recognition. Pleasure. Comfort.
And maybe you’ve gotten some of those things. Maybe you’ve gotten everything you thought you wanted.
But you’re still hungry.
Jesus offers you something this world cannot give you.
He offers you himself.
And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior and Lord, I want to invite you to come to him today.
But maybe you’re here this morning, and you made a profession of faith years ago. You walked an aisle. You prayed a prayer. You were baptized.
And those may have been wonderful, genuine expressions of faith.
But what about today?
Is there evidence of a living relationship with Jesus Christ?
And if you realize this morning that you’ve been trusting in a past religious experience rather than trusting in Christ himself, don’t ignore that.
Come to Jesus.
And maybe you know that you belong to Christ, but your spiritual appetite has grown weak.
Then perhaps your prayer this morning needs to be the prayer of Moses:
“Lord, show me your glory.”
Because here’s what I’ve discovered about the Christian life.
The Christian life isn’t a search for something better than Jesus. It’s a lifelong discovery that there is nothing better than Jesus.
So stay hungry.
Stay hungry to know him. Stay hungry to become more like him. Stay hungry for the day when his righteousness fills the earth.
And stay satisfied.
Because in Jesus Christ, you’ve found the only One who can satisfy your soul.
Stay hungry. Stay satisfied.
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