Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
For
they shall be filled.
Matt
5:6
If
anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in
Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of
living water.
John
7:37-39
I
am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness,
and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that
one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down
from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and
the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the
life of the world."
John
6:48-51
“Oh
Lord thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest
except we find it in Thee.”
Augustine
“We
taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to
fill.”
Bernard
of Clairveux
I
remember as a little kid being invited to a friend’s house to eat.
My friend’s mother made a banquet type meal complete with Chicken
Parmesan, spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, and spumoni ice cream. (At
least it is my idea of a banquet!) But before I went I didn’t know
what I was going to be having for supper. I was afraid that it might
be a meal like my mother’s favorite meal. I called this “the meal
from hell”. It consisted of a combination of pork chops, liver, or
spam, along with broccoli, hominy (which I called agony), and
Swanson’s T.V. Corn Bread (whose constitution was much like eating
sawdust!) So dreading the possibilities I loaded up beforehand upon
good old peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (also known as PB and J).
As a result, when I got to my friend’s house, to my surprise my
dream feast was being served, but to my disappointment I had
absolutely no appetite and therefore ended up passing on the meal. I
missed out on the feast because I settled for a sandwich.
I
am afraid that many of us are in danger of becoming peanut butter and
jelly Christians stuffed with other food that has robbed us of an
appetite for God. Every day of life a war goes on in regards to our
appetites. Every one of us has all been born with appetites and
desires. They dictate what directs us and what satisfies us whether
it is the cravings of our physical hunger, the desire for the things
that this world offers, or the deep longings of our souls for God.
Augustine
said, “Oh
Lord thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest
except we find it in Thee.” i
The
heart of man is full of restlessness and longing.
We are both afflicted and blessed with a chronic restlessness, an
insatiable soul-thirst for this reason: that we might keep looking
until we find Christ. And that having found him we might be turned
back to Him again and again when we leave His spring to taste of
other springs and find them lacking. As Augustine said, we were made
for God. Our souls longing was made to be satisfied in fellowship
with the Son of God. No wonder that Jesus said in John 6:35:
"I
am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he
who believes in Me shall never thirst.
John 4:14,
but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never
thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a
fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."
Salvation
is the awakening of our appetites for God. It is a “peculiar
appetite”. It is an appetite that God gives the palette of our
souls for Him. “Oh
taste and see that the Lord is good”,
says the Psalmest (Psalm 34:8). Once you have tasted the Lord,
nothing less will ever satisfy your longings. No wonder, for when we
taste of God’s ultimate goodness, anything else would be like
penute butter and jelly sandwhiches compared to filete mignonge!
When
I lived in Mexico my family and I lived on fish. Every day I would
have to catch or spear dinner. Unfortunately, I had neither the
ability to catch fish nor the availability of many fish except Opal
Eye (Which is a reef fish full of scales, bones, and tastes aweful
but is edible). We would eat this every day until one day a fisherman
brought us some Red Snapper and Sierra. Once we tasted these
delicious fish’s we were never able to be satisfied with Opal Eye
again. The more of these we ate the less we desired Opal Eye. Our
palttes had been awakened to real fish, good fish, and thus we lost
our appetite for Opal Eye’s.
When
we are converted God awakens in us we a new appetite for Him and a
new delight in God. Saint Augustine describes this in his description
of his own conversion when he writes:
“How
sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys
that I once feared to lose was now a joy to part with.You drove them
from me, you who are the true soveriegn joy. You drove them from me
and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though
not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, yet are hidden
deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor,
though not in the eyes of men who see honor in themselves…Oh Lord
my God, my light, my wealth, and my salvation!”ii
The
Bible is full of examples of the creation of this new “peculiar
appetite”. It is a precious gift of grace from God. Throughout the
Bible we see people yearning, hungering, thirsting, longing for, and
desiring God.
Asaph
describes an appetite for God that is so strong that it eliminates
all other desires. “Whom
have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire
besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the
strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
(Psalm 75:25-26) David describes this appetite in terms of a deer
thirsting for water. “As
a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O
God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
(Psalm 42:1-2) Another time David uses similar words to describe his
desire for God. “O
God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there
is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding
your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than
life, my lips will praise you”
(Psalm 63:1-3). The Apostle Paul went from a man who persecuted
Christians to one whose desires had been transformed to cry out. “My
desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better…But
whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss
of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain
Christ”
(Philippians 1:23; 3:7-8).
The
creation of a peculair appetite for God alone also leads to a
peculair satisfaction in God alone. As God graces us with peculiar
desiring craving, hungering, thirsting, and longing so He also graces
us with a peculair satisfaction, joy, delight, fulfillment, pleasure,
happiness, gladness. They go together. Listen to the words of David
who discovered such satisfaction in God that he proclaimed in Psalm
16:11, “You
make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness
of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Jesus
spoke of conversion in such a way that the discovery of the pleasures
and value of
heaven
“is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered
up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that
field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of
fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold
all that he had and bought it”
(Matthew
13:44-46).
So
Christianity is the creation of new desires and the fulment of those
desires. God is the object of our desire and God is the fulfillment
of our desire. Our whole life is a life of desiring God and tasting
God and enjoying God which leads to a deeper hunger for God and more
satisfaction in God. We always want more of God and the more of Him
we get, the more we want. Bernard of Clairveux so aptly described his
own experience of cravings and satisfaction:
“We
taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to
fill.” iiiAnother
time he wrote:
“Jesus,
Thou joy of loving hearts Thou fount of lifr, Thou light of men from
the best bliss that earth imparts we trun unfulfilled to Thee
again.”iv
This
appetite for God and the satisfaction that results in God are the
most important ways we fulfill our creation purpose. The apostle
Paul writes,
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the
glory of God”
(1 Corinthians 10:31). The Westminster Catechism begins “The
chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” The
lynchpin of my mentor John Piper’s theology is that “God
is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him.”v
The
truth of God’s creation of these new peculiar appetites and their
new fulfilments is both our greatest blessing and our greatest
downfall. It is our greatest blessing because it shows that the
worth and value of God is the source of our deepest satisfaction. But
it is our greatest downfall because it reveals to us that our desires
and the fulfillment of those desires are often far below what God
created and saved us for. Augustine described it this way from his
own experience:
“I
was astonished that though I now loved Thee…yet I did not press on
to enjoy my God. Your beauty drove me to you, but soon I was dragged
away by my own weight sinking with sorrow into those inferior
things…as though I sensed the fragence of the fare but was not yet
able to eat it.”vi
Indwelling
sin is what stands in the way of my desire for God and my
satisfaction in God. God
defines sin in this way through the prophet Jeremiah. "My
people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain
of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken
cisterns that can hold no water"
(Jeremiah 2:13).
Here
God pictures himself as a constant flowing fountain of refreshing
life-giving water. The way to affirm the worth of a fountain like
this is to enjoy the water, and praise the water, and keep coming
back to the water, and point
other people to the water, and get strength from the water, and
never, never, never prefer any drink in the world over this water.
That is what makes the fountain look valuable. That is how we glorify
the worth and value God, the fountain of living water.
But in Jeremiah's day
people tasted the fountain of God's grace and did not like it. So
they gave their energies to finding better water, more satisfying
water. Not only did God call this effort futile ("broken
cisterns that
can hold no water"), but
he called it evil: "My people have committed two evils."
They put
God's perfections to the tongue of their souls and disliked what they
tasted; then they turned and craved the suicidal cisterns of the
world. That double insult to God is the very essence of what evil is.
Preferring
the pleasures of self, possessions, money, power, acheivement, fame,
or sex over the pleasures of God is a great evil. The sins of Israel,
like all of our sins, stood in the way of their satisfaction with God
alone. Sin always opposes and perverts our pursuit of God. It
opposes our pursuit by making other things look more desirable than
God. And it perverts our pursuit by making us think that we are
pursuing God when in fact we are in love with His gifts. Indeed it is
the ultimate meaning of evil. Esteeming God less than anything
is the essence of evil.
Life
is war. The Apostle Paul calls it “the
good fight of faith” (1
Timothy 6:12). Every day of our lives here on this earth is a battle
for our appetites and their satisfaction. What we desire for is what
will lead to what we believe will satisfy us. The great enemy in
this war is what Jesus calls “the
desires or appetite for other things” (Mark
4:19).
And the only weapon that will triumph is a deep hunger and thirst for
God. There are those whose lack of a hunger for God is not because
God is unpleasant. Perhaps at one time their palatte was awakened
when they “tasted
and saw that the Lord was good”
(Psalm 34:8). But, because they have kept themselves stuffed with
“other things” they’ve lost their appetite for God. Their soul
has been stuffed with small insignificant things, and there is no
room any more for the great and worthy thing; they are full of what
the world has offered.
This
is what took place with Israel in Psalm 106. We read: “They
soon forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel, But lusted
exceedingly in the wilderness, And tested God in the desert. And He
gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul.”
(Psalm
106:13-15)
The
Psalmist takes us back to the time of the deliverance of Israel from
Egypt and God’s leading them in the wilderness of Canaan. In verses
13-14, the Psalmist says that the Israelites forgot God’s works and
did not want to wait for His counsel or word. In short, they didn’t
want to wait for Him! Instead, they craved meat for their stomachs.
They were tired of eating the bread (manna) from heaven that God
provided for them. Manna represented more than the provision for
Israel’s physical hunger. Moses said that God humbled them “causing
you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor
your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread
alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”
(Deuteronomy 8:3). In short, manna was meant to teach Israel to live
on God and to be satisifed with Him.
But
Israel lost their appetite for God and His provision. So He gave them
their request (verse 15). He showered the camp with quails. But along
with the food God sent “leaness
into their soul”.
The people wasted away even while feasting upon “quail under
glass.”
This
illustrates how God's
greatest adversaries are His gifts. The greatest enemy of hunger for
God is endless nibbling at the table of the world. For all the ill
that Satan can do, listen to how Jesus sadly describes what keeps us
from the banquet table of his love:
"A
certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At
the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had
been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' "But they all
alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a
field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' "Another
said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try
them out. Please excuse me.' "Still another said, 'I just got
married, so I can't come.' "The servant came back and reported
this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and
ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of
the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the
lame.' "'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been
done, but there is still room.' "Then the master told his
servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come
in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not
one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.'"
(Luke
14:16-24)
Do
you see what keeps us from His banquet table? All are things that in
themselves are good. It is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a
wife (Luke 14:18-20). The
greatest adversary of love to God is not His enemies but His gifts.
And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for
the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite
for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost
incurable.
Jesus
said another time that some people hear the word of God, and a desire
for God is awakened in their hearts. But then, "as
they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and
pleasures of this life" (Luke
8:14).
In
another place he said,
"The desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and
it becomes unfruitful" (Mark
4:19).
"The
pleasures of this life" and "the desires for other things",
these are not evil in themselves. These are not vices. These are
gifts of God. They are family dinners and coffee at Starbucks and
gardening and reading a good book and decorating your house and
playing with your kids and traveling across the U.S. and family
get-togethers and date nights and investing in real estate and CD
listening and DVD -watching and Internet-surfing and shopping and
exercising and collecting and talking. And all of them can become
deadly substitutes for God. These can be the very things that kill
the soul.
PRAYER
Oh
Lord, fountain of life, living water, bread from heaven. You are our
true desire and true delight to our hungry and thirsty souls. But
Lord, we are weak. We desire the wrong things and are satisfied with
the wrong things. No wonder we are so empty inside. Forgive us for
our opposition to you by looking to other things to satisfy our
restless longings and forgive us from perverting what satisfies us by
looking to your gifts rather than you for our hearts delight. We
agree with the Psalmist, “Who have we in heaven but You and there
is nothing on earth that we want besides You. Though our flesh and
heart may fail, You alone are the strength of our heart and our
portion forever.” Oh Jesus, create in us a desire to desire You and
a delight to delight in You. In Jesus satisfying and delightful Name,
AMEN.
i
Saint Augustine, edited by Edward Pursey The
Confessions of Saint Augustine (New
York, N.Y.:Collier Books) book 1,p. 11
ii
Ibid, Book 9, p.133
iii
Bernard of Clairveux quoted in The
New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations
(Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books) p. 923
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