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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Go for the Gold." Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. One of the greatest thrills of my life was to be present for the games of the 23rd

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Olympiad held in Los Angeles in 1984. There are some scenes from that event which I shall never forget. The Coliseum with every seat and every stair crowded with people. The dignity with which the Olympic flag was carried into the stadium. Rafer Johnson running up those tall steps with that flame that had

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ignited that bowl of fire, the symbol of the presence of the games. Mary Decker's fall as she tried so hard to break her record. The superb speed of Carl Lewis. The grace and the form of people like Mary Lou Retton and Peter Vidmar and Bart Connors and Mitch Gaylord. To watch them fly through the air with the

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greatest of ease. To see the Australian Dinko Lupin lift 412 and a half pounds to set a new world record. Or to watch Karen Stives as she was aboard Ben Arthur, a magnificent horse, and went through the equestrian endurance contest. And Sylvie Bernier, the Canadian, and our own Greg Louganis, the magnificent dives

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that they performed. All of these people did these things because they were going for the gold. That's what you heard all around Los Angeles for the two weeks of the games. Go for the gold. Now the motto of the Olympic games is sitius altius fortius, which means faster, higher, stronger. Why are these things

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required? Because if you are going to gain the gold, you are going to have to go faster than everyone else, higher than anyone else, and you are going to have to go with greater strength than anyone else. Now when Jesus says to us, "Happy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled,"

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he is saying to us, "Go for the gold. Go faster, go higher, and grow stronger to gain the gold of the promise of eternity." Look at it, sitius, which means faster. This speaks to us of the urgency of desire that is to be ours as we pursue righteousness. Jesus says, "Happy are those who hunger and thirst after

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righteousness." Now it's difficult for us to know what hunger and thirst mean. Words take on their meaning in terms of our own experience. If I say the word "pain" to someone who has gone through great physical agony, they have one thought about what pain is. If I say the word "pain" to someone who has never been sick

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a day in her life, her understanding of pain will be altogether different. Now most of us have never really been hungry or really been thirsty, so we cannot fully understand what Jesus means here. What we must remember is that in the first century, the common people lived on the very edge of starvation. If they

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missed work for one day, their family went to bed hungry that night. Daily food was absolutely essential. If they didn't have it, they would die. We don't think much about not having enough water. Oh, we grouse about things when we can't water our lawns in the summer, but the fact is we can go to a fountain or a faucet

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anywhere and get the water that we need to drink. But in the first century, when you were going on even a short trip, a mile or so, there was the possibility of a sandstorm or a dust storm coming up, and that fine dust would find its way into your nostrils and your mouth and your throat, and you had to have water.

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You had to have drink or you would die. So what Jesus is really saying here is, "Happy are those who want righteousness as much as a starving man wants food, and as much as one dying of thirst wants something to drink." This is the significance of the story of the rich young ruler which was read just a moment

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ago. He was a young man who came to Jesus and said he wanted to have eternal life. He wanted to have righteousness, and Jesus loved him. And Jesus said, "Are you ready to go after it with everything that it takes, faster than you've ever gone before? In fact, are you willing to lay aside what is the most important

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thing in your life, namely your possessions?" And the young man was not willing to make that sacrifice, and he walked away sorrowing. Jesus does not say to us in this word of his, "Blessed are those who have an inclination toward God." He does not say, "Blessed are those who find some measure of want in themselves

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with regard to God." Quite to the contrary, he says, "Blessed are those who want God's righteousness with passion, with an urgency that leads them to go all beyond any speed they've ever had before in seeking after it." I think there are three main reasons why people do not pursue righteousness as Jesus calls us to

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pursue it. In the first place, there are some who do not pursue it simply because they're ignorant. They think that Christianity is nothing more than fanaticism. They've had just enough faith to be inoculated against it. Then there are other people who do not pursue righteousness because, well, they

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procrastinate. "I won't do it today. I'll do it tomorrow," forgetting that there may be no tomorrow. Now, I'm not saying that they will be dead before tomorrow. That's always a possibility, but I don't think that is the main thought here. The main thought is this. There are certain moments in our lives when the Holy

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Spirit comes upon us in such a way that our hearts are susceptible to his ministry. Every moment in our lives is not like that. There are certain moments when we miss those moments, when we say, "I won't take this moment. I'll wait for another." Then we imperil ourselves because there may never be another

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moment exactly like that one. When the Spirit calls, we must answer. And the third reason people do not pursue righteousness is because they don't think they're good enough. You see, they make the mistake of thinking that what Jesus says here is, "Happy are the righteous." He doesn't say that. He says,

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"Happy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." You don't have to already have the gold. You just have to be willing to go after the gold with all you've got. Urgency, "sitteus," faster. Now, the second word on the Olympic motto is "alteus," higher, which says we are to settle for nothing than the highest, and

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the highest is righteousness. We all understand that pain is the alarm system of the body. If we did not have bodies that would register hurt when something was wrong, we would surely die. If, for example, your appendix could become affected and yet would give you no pain so that you did not know what was

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happening, it would eventually rupture and you would be unaware of it and be filled with an infection which would surely take your life. But it's precisely because it begins to hurt that we can take the steps that are necessary to cure the problem before it becomes fatal. Now, what would you think if you had a

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doctor who never bothered to cure you of what you were ill, but instead simply tried to take away any unpleasant symptoms you had? What would you say of a doctor who never went into you to put out the fire of illness or disease that was there, but instead went around turning off the fire alarm, all the

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whistles and the bells that might alert you? What would you say of such a one? Well, that kind of behavior would be criminal because it would inevitably lead to people's deaths. Now, it's just this mistake that many non-Christians make. The world has a great deal of pain in it, a great deal of hurt, and a great

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deal of agony, but the world doesn't face the reality of that. Instead, the world stacks up parties and drugs and entertainment, a kind of pleasure mania, the narcotics of a good time. Jesus says, "No, this is wrong. This leads to death. There is only one thing that is going to take away the pain of the world, and that

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is righteousness. You must passionately desire the highest, to live even as I live. Sitteous, go earnestly, go with urgency. Alteous, go for the highest. Righteousness, go for the gold." Now, what is righteousness? The Bible defines it in a number of ways. It says that righteousness in its simplest form is to

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be in a right relationship with God and with others. On a slightly different level, there is another meaning for the word righteousness, which is that we are to be committed to justice, not only for ourselves, but for everyone. But at its most profound level, when the Bible speaks of righteousness, it is saying,

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"This is the relationship which exists between a person and God once that person has come to God through Jesus Christ." You see, when we come to God through the sacrifice of his Son, Jesus saving death on the cross, we are declared by God to be righteous, to be innocent, to be pure. Now, we are not

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innocent, and we are not pure. We all know that we sin, and we will not in this life accomplish perfection on any level. We all understand that. But the mercy of God is so great that he says to us, "If you come through my Son, I will count it as though you were altogether innocent, totally pure." And that relationship with

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God, that being declared innocent, that being declared pure, even when you're not, is what righteousness on its deepest level really is. Righteousness is not some icy theology. It's not some frigid religious formalism, such as the Pharisees of Jesus' day practiced. Jesus said, "If your righteousness does not

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exceed that of the Pharisees, you shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." No, rather than ice, righteousness is the hot fire of God's love burning down so deeply into you that it goes through you to other people. You glow because of him, and your glow alights, illumines, enkindles the lives of others. Righteousness is to

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be filled with the flame of the Holy Spirit. Now, the world offers us its counsel, it offers us its criticisms, its comforts, its consolations, it offers us its clamor and its congratulations, but all of these things are in the end false. Righteousness is gold. Everything else is counterfeit, and Jesus says, "Go for the

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gold, the highest order of living, to be right with God, to be right with others, and to be right with yourself. Sidious, go after it with everything you've got. Alteous, for nothing less than the highest. Happy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness." And the last word in the Olympic motto is "forteous,"

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"stronger." And this refers, I think, in this instance, as I am using it this morning, to providing for us a tremendous motivating power, an energy in motivation, which leads us to do things we would not otherwise be able to do. Notice what Jesus says, "Happy are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,

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for they shall be filled." And the word "filled" means to be running over, to be absolutely bulging. Now what is there that could lead a person to exert themselves more than to know that the end of that exertion is to spend eternity with the perfect glory of God in a place where there is no suffering

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and no hurt and no harm? Remember when you think about repentance, that repentance is hard. Repentance is being sorrowful about our sins. Jesus was speaking of this when he said, "Blessed are those who mourn." And it is painful to be sorrowful for our sins, and yet that is necessary. That's the negative side of

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repentance. The positive side of repentance is this, that we go to God understanding that we are the children of God, that we are God's idea, and that God doesn't have any bad ideas. The promise is that if we become one with him, all things are possible to us. And when you know that, that that's the goal

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you're after, that that's the reward which stands at the end, there's incredible energy in such a promise. I read about a flower shop that got two of its baskets confused, sent them to the wrong places. They called the local bank which had moved from one place to another in town, and they said, "We're very

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sorry, we sent you the wrong basket of flowers." And they said, "Well, we figured that when we saw the ribbon on the front which said, 'Rest in Peace.' But don't worry about it, everything's all right, no trouble." And the florist said, "Oh yes, there's a great deal of trouble. I'm not really worried about the basket I

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sent to you. I'm worried about the basket that was supposed to go to the funeral home to Mr. Jones, because the ribbon on that basket reads, 'Congratulations on your new location.'" Well, we had that kind of confusion here, but God is never confused. God gives the flowers. God gives the bouquets. God gives the blossoms of

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eternal promise. God fills. God gives the gold to those who go after it, sitious, alteous, fortious, as fast as they can, as high as they can, and with all the motivating power that comes from knowing that you can be one with God forever. And remember, too, that the person who is the slowest in the race, the person who is

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the weakest, the person who finds it most difficult to climb, that's the person to whom God is especially close. Just as a father stands nearest the child that needs the most assistance, so God stands with those who most need help in the pursuit of righteousness. That's what Jesus means when he says, "Come unto me,

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all ye that are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." In the promise that we have here, we have what the poet says in three lines, "All I could never be, all men ignored in me, this I was worth to God." And that's gold, so press on. I was sitting in my study a few weeks ago and I was rereading portions of William

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Herndon's Life of Lincoln, and I'd been reading for some time and my eyes were rather heavy, and so I put the book into my lap and I drifted off into sleep. And I saw before me the city of God, the celestial city, and it had four sides. There were twelve gates in the four sides. At each of the four corners there

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were great, ornamental, glorious, ceremonial gates, but there were also eight other gates. And as I looked at this city, which was filled with an ecstasy of gladness, I went in the direction of these other eight gates. Now they were all the same except for one, which was about four times larger than

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all of the others. There was an inscription over that gate, but there were so many people going through that gate that I couldn't read what the inscription said, so I decided to go around and look at the other gates. And I went to the first gate and it said, "Happy are the poor in spirit," and those people

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were promised God's kingdom as they entered heaven. And I went to the second gate and over it was the inscription, "Happy are those who mourn, who have sorrow for their own sin and for the world's sin." And as those people went in, they were marvelously comforted. And the third gate said, "Happy are the meek," and

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as they went through the gate, they were given the title deed to the whole earth. Now I'd come again to that fourth gate, which was much larger than the others, but the crowd was still too great and I couldn't see what was said over it, so I continued on. The fifth gate, which had above it, "Happy are the merciful," and the

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sixth gate, "Happy are the pure in heart," and then the seventh gate, "Happy are the peacemakers," and the eighth gate, "Happy are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake." And now you see I had circled the whole city and I had returned to that fourth gate that I hadn't been able to get close to, though

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it was really larger than all the others. And then I noticed something very interesting. Many people who were trying to go in the other gates, when they would get to the gates, they would stop and they would begin to weep and to lament. They would know, you see, that they did not mourn for their sins as much as they

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should have. They would know that they were not as meek as they should have been. They would know that they were not the peacemakers that they should have been. And so without even trying to go through those gates, they would turn and begin to walk sorrowing away. But moving amongst them as they turned were members

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of a heavenly host, and they said to these people, "As evil is the desire for evil, so grace is the desire for grace." [silence] And they all headed for this fourth gate, this gate which was larger than

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the others. And we stood in a long line until at last, and the crowd was quite cheerful now, until at last we were close enough that I could begin to see what was written above that gate. And it said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." And the words sparkled and

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scintillated in the light, for you see there is no darkness there. And the people about me began to sing songs of victory, and the songs were so loud that they awakened me. And I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and I picked up the book, and I began reading just where I'd left off, where William Herndon reports of

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how he said to Abraham Lincoln on one occasion, "What is it you're reading?" And Abraham Lincoln replied, "I am reading the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He speaks there about blessedness, about happiness. I have discovered that I can claim only one of the secrets which are necessary for that happiness. I

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am much less than I ought to be," said our 16th president, "but God knows I do hunger and thirst to be better than I am. I do hunger and thirst after righteousness." And according to Jesus, that is all that is needed. And Abraham Lincoln was right. We don't have to have the gold. We don't have to have the gold to be disciples of

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Christ. We have sitius, altius, fortius. We are to go with urgency toward the highest of targets and motivated by the love of God in an effort to gain the gold. We don't have to have the gold, we just have to be ready to go for it. That's the gospel in a single sentence. Go for the gold. Blessed are those happy

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are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. They shall be filled. Praise God, they shall be filled. Pray with me. Our Father in those moments when we begin to be utterly discouraged with

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ourselves, remind us that we are your idea and that you have no bad ideas. Remind us that all we need do is pursue with urgency right relationships with God and with others and with ourselves, knowing that if we do these things we will enjoy the kingdom of heaven forever and forever. And grant that as this

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knowledge seeps into every corner of our beings, we will be led to run the race, to jump the jump, to lift the weight. Grant that we might be faster, higher, and stronger than we'd ever been before because of the indwelling power of your Holy Spirit. We thank thee that we don't have to have the gold, we just have to go

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for it with everything you've given us. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]