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[silence] The subject of the message, "Hunger and Thirst After Righteousness." "Hunger and thirst after righteousness." Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

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We are considering what may be called the prescription for the happy life, Guidelines for blessedness. Many people have ideas as to how they may be happy. Some think that happiness is following a path of wealth. If one gets enough of the material things of this world, they think that they can be happy. But well do we know that many people who have an abundance

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of material things are unhappy. Others think that happiness is indulgence in the pleasures of life, that it is satisfying the human impulses, well do we know that one may indulge or engage in the pleasures of human existence and yet fail to find happiness. Others think that happiness is in power and so they seek to attain positions in which they rule over people and the idea

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is that the more power one wields, the more likely one is to be happy. do we know that those who have been successful in attaining a great deal of power have not found happiness in this way. You see there is the thought that happiness consists in certain actions that we can do certain things and by the very doing of certain things receive happiness.

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But there are many people who act like they are happy but who really are not happy. are those who laugh to keep from crying as the saying goes. So one cannot judge happiness on the basis of actions. Activity may be a means of happiness or activity may be an overflow of a state of happiness because one is happy. There may be this overflow of activities that are the

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byproduct of this happiness, but activities in and of themselves do not constitute happiness. The happy life, however, is a social life. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. The happy life is a social life. One cannot really be happy by oneself. There are those who try to live to themselves, who say I don't need anybody else, I don't need the people.

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There are those who would seek to exist in a kind of hermit-like manner, but this does not make for happiness. You know the familiar poem, "Let me live in my house by the side of the road where the race of men go by. They're good, they're bad, they're weak, they're strong. Wise, foolish, so am I. Then why should I sit in the sconner's seat or hurl the cynics ban? Let me live in my house by

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the side of the road and be a friend of man. This is a recognition that even though one lives in a house by the side of the road there is a relationship which is held with others. For happiness is a social life and happiness is being. It is not possessed just by doing, but being. There is a state of happiness which has to do with one being,

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and that being is expressed also by doing. But Jesus in describing how we may be happy, recognizes and it is pointed up here in these words, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Righteousness. You know there are two heresies that we ought to try to avoid. One says if I do right it doesn't matter what I am as long as I do right it really doesn't matter

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what I am. So some people do certain acts that are right they perform certain acts of kindness but they are devils in their hearts. They do many good things but they are just devils. And the way they think and the way they express themselves, the way they really are, they are devils but they do many good things. Some people say well you know this is this is

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really good I really like this. I used to hear the old saying, hear older people say when I was a boy that I like it it was good even if the devil brought it. So that's one of the heresies that people entertain that if I do right it doesn't matter what I am. Well it really does matter. There's another heresy which is a distortion

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here of what happiness really is and that point of view is that if I am right It doesn't matter what I do. There are those who claim to be right with God, and so they use that as a means of doing anything they want to do. And I've heard people say, "Well, you know, two clean sheets can't soil each other."

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So they use that as an excuse to do anything they want to do. Well, we have to try to live in God and be right. That's what Jesus is saying. "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness."

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In other words, we need to learn to be right. You know, you've heard people say, "You know, he is just not right. just isn't right. In other words, that really isn't just this righteousness that is embedded in one's character. They just aren't made up to do right. And so if one would be happy,

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one needs to try to live in God and be right and in being right one also engages in doing right and we learn to be right as we keep trying to do right. Hunger and thirst after righteousness, In other words, social justice. If one is really going to be happy, it depends on how we treat people.

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You can't mistreat people and think we're going to be happy. It just doesn't work that way. There needs to be a thirst for social justice. That we, that really needs to be a concern for the doing of righteousness.

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Doing of righteousness. And so when you talk about righteousness, it means a sort of thirst. So one can't just live away somewhere secluded in a little cave somewhere and not be concerned about what's happening to the rest of society no matter how secure you may be. Now a lot of people who feel that you know if I can just make it, I don't care what happen

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to anybody else, if I can just make it. But Jesus is saying that happiness is related to righteousness and to the doing of right. And it means that a person needs to have a social conscience. And this social conscience is, and social concern,

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isn't something that is added on to your Christianity. It's not some kind of appendix that's added on to your Christianity. It's something that is a natural outgrowth,

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a byproduct of one's religion. And that's one of the problems with the church. This is one of the problems with society, is that so often we think that we can pray and read the Bible and talk about righteousness and not really engage in the doing of righteousness.

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And when one does that, one really misses the kind of happiness that Jesus is talking about. So social justice, righteousness, doing right, doing right. You know, really to do right means to recognize that this life in God that we're talking about

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to do with the love of God. It's a relationship, yes, where I pray, I read the scriptures, I engage in meditation, yes, that vertical relationship with God, but there also is that horizontal relationship with man. and we can't have one without the other. They go together and that has to do with happiness. So love of God and love of neighbor. So the kind of righteousness when Jesus says blessed,

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"Oh blessed are you, happy, happy are you when you hunger and thirst after righteousness." So when a person is really right, when you're really right with yourself, when you're right with God, and when you are right with other people, and that comes from having a relationship, a sort of status, it's a sort of an attitude toward life, it's a sort of perspective, it's a relationship, it's an attitude, it's a way of looking at life, it's a way of living.

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So, you, to really do justly, oh, someone said that you can't really make a man love his wife, but you can stop him from beating her. Now he may not beat his wife and he still may not love her. So you can treat people right on the surface and not love them.

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But what Jesus is talking about, the kind of righteousness that Jesus is talking about righteousness that stems from love. Love is the stuff of the Christian life. So the kind of justice that we're talking about in the world is the outgrowth of love. And that's really my problem with some of these protest groups is that

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many of them think that they can act any sort of way because a wrong has been done and they commit another wrong in trying to correct that wrong. And the righteousness which they seek to establish in society is not a righteousness that is based on love. And so we can never have a happy state of being as long as

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love is not the basis of our actions. That's why Jesus is saying blessed, blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness and so we must have that love, that love that is an insatiable Unleashable desire for justice in other words it ought to concern us when someone else is

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being Mistreated it ought to concern us. I'm a little disturbed About all of the talk that I hear about busing Some people have just discovered

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That some of us have been bused for the last almost 10 years years for desegregation purposes now we've been bused all out all the time because of our race many of us who did not happen to live at a school that was near us but some have just discovered busing when it comes to them and some

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one dear lady said to me she said you know I didn't know that the black people were being bused. I didn't know that. And it's got to be so many times that people never, never get concerned about what's really happening to other people and it's only when it affects me that I become so righteous but happiness we'll never be happy never

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have the kind of social order we'll never have that kind of beloved community that we talk about until we have that insatiable love for justice in other words I want everybody to be treated right and I'm going to be an instrument I'm going to be a channel to see to it that everybody receives justice.

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You know, and it concerns me after serving six years on the school board I find out that so many people aren't really concerned about all the people they're only concerned about what they can get out of the pot. They got some personal something and once they get what they want they're through. But I find that so

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very few are really concerned about all the children getting all that they should have so that every child has the Opportunity to learn and to have the best education possible for every child Justice that's justice Equality

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Justice a concern for justice and so we have to have that love We have to be concerned about injustice wherever we find it. We ought to cry out against injustice There's a price to pay for that many times. You're gonna be misunderstood Be misunderstood

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There have been times when I've spoken against injustice when I didn't know what was gonna happen to me And there'd be certain circles you move in when you cried against the injustice well you may not fare so well well. But if somehow you have that love for justice deep down in your heart, that you'll have a satisfaction. It's a satisfaction of you feel good in yourself. Even though many times

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that there will be some suffering, you'll know that that suffering is redemptive. So there is a zeal for justice. You know this kind of zeal that I'm talking about, but just Jesus is saying that blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness that the kind of zeal for justice that I'm talking about is meaningless. It

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doesn't have any meaning at all unless the person is just. A zeal for justice. Well, if you want to work for justice, one has to remember the Beatitudes and work for justice in poverty of spirit and meekness of heart. What are they?

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That hunger and thirst after righteousness. And I've discovered late in life that you aren't at your best health when you're always stuffing your gut

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and you're always full. That you're really in a little better shape if you know how to be a little hungry. And instead of being fat and flabby and weak and unhealthy,

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then one can be lean and strong as far as the use of one's life and the consumption of food. And one of our problems is that in our society is that we try to subsist on a great deal of junk food,

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lot of garbage we put in our systems. That's true of the spiritual life and we try to make it on knickknacks rather than a good diet. So what Jesus is talking about, "Happy, blessed are you when you hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Now how does this happen? In other words

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if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, and the heart panting after the water brook as you hunger and thirst for social justice that somehow whatever you really want and whatever you need in order to have this kind of thirst for justice, you have to get it from God. If you want to have faith, if you want to have that kind of commitment to justice,

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that you somehow have to ask God, and God gives it to you, and then you give it to others. There's always a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness. If you want to have courage in order to stand firm for your convictions and to fight for justice for others, ask God! And God somehow gives what we ask and what we need, and we have it, and that makes for the happy life.

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Blessed are you. Blessed are you. And you hunger and thirst after righteousness. But when you have that hunger, when you really have the hunger, when we have that hunger for righteousness, God supplies our needs.

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Make no mistake about it, if you really, if you really, if you really have it in your heart of hearts that you're going to do right, God will provide. You really, we really make up in our minds that we're going to be right. I don't care what happens, God's going to provide. I remember some time ago earlier in my ministry, one man who was an usher in our church.

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He was working for a service station, and so he had to put the stickers on the cars. And the man wanted him to do something that wasn't right. The owner did, and putting the stickers on the cars. He told the man he wasn't going to do that.

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The man told him, "Well, if you can't do that, that's not right, so I'm not going to do it." He said, "Well, you can't work here." He came and he told me, "Well, I don't have a job anymore, I'm just going to trust in the Lord. Well, he's got a job in the next day or two."

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When you really do right. You see, it's so written in the universe, it's written in the moral fervor of the universe that if you do right, that God will take care of you. "Blessed are they," that's what he's saying, it has a promise here, "Blessed are they,"

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God's already given the promise and he fulfills it, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst righteousness. Go out into the desert. Wander in the wilderness for righteousness. Nobody there but you. But wander in the wilderness for righteousness. And God will rain down manna from heaven. Thirst for righteousness, even in a dry place, and God will provide water from the rock. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for faith shall be filled.

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And as we sing now the hymn of invitation, I heard the voice of Jesus say, "Come unto me and rest." We extend the privilege for those who will commit themselves, following Jesus Christ, living according to his demands, following his commands. Let me invite you to come now. [Music]

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[MUSIC] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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♪ Learning to see the light of day ♪ ♪ We live in a world we can't deny ♪ ♪ But now we see the great big day ♪ ♪ And we can't stay in line ♪

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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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♪ I'm going to be a man ♪ ♪ I'm going to be a man ♪ ♪ I'm going to be a man ♪ ♪ I'm going to be a man ♪

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[Music] Let us pray. Grace of God our Father, we thank you for the prescription for the happy life given us by Jesus.

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Help us all to have that concern for righteousness, for the doing of that which is right. Help us first of all to be right in our hearts, to be right with you, to be right with ourselves, to be right with others, so that we may truly be possessed with that hunger and thirst after righteousness that will satisfy our hearts and satisfy you.

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