What are you Hungering for?
Matthew 5:6
Sermon on the Mount # 5
What is thirst? (The water wells at Sheria)
What is your passion in life? What is your soul passion?
If you aim at happiness, you will miss it.
What is righteousness?
The righteousness of justification (Romans 3:21-22; Phil 3:8-9)
Do you hunger for God’s righteousness?
The righteousness of sanctification (Matthew 5:10; 6:1; Psalm 106:3)
The only truly happy people that I have ever known were seeking righteousness.
Do you have a hunger for personal righteousness?
The righteousness of society (Proverbs 14:34, Daniel 12:2-3; Matthew 5:19)
Do you hunger and thirst after public righteousness?
What are we filled with? (Satisfied)
Righteousness (Psalm 37:4)
The Bible and the Sports Car
Pursuing righteousness (Matthew 6:33)
Prayer
Our Lord and our God, we come to You this day and we acknowledge that You are
the only wise God. You are God Almighty, You are the God of host, and You are
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel and all those who believe by that faith of
Abraham in the one true God through Your gracious covenant to us in Jesus
Christ. We acknowledge and here declare our desire and purpose to worship You
and worship You alone, and we ask for Your assistance and acceptance as we do.
We adore You, we give You honor, we give to You this day the glory due Your
name. And we adore You for Your nature, Your person, for what You are like.
You are infinite and eternal and unchangeable in Your being, wisdom, power,
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. You are a God of love and mercy and
righteousness and justice, and Your works are displayed in Your creation and in
Your providence, and in Your glorious redemption. And, above all O God, we adore
and honor You, for though You are our Creator, You have chosen also to be our
Father, our Redeemer, our King, our Almighty Friend, and our Everlasting
Inheritance. We confess our sins before You this day, for though You have
redeemed us by the blood of Christ, though You have forgiven us for His sake,
and declared us to be righteous in Your sight, justifying us freely by His
blood, yet we are still sinners and we confess before You this day, both the
original sin of our first parents which is credited to our account, and all the
actual sins that flow from that sin.
And so we praise O God Your forgiveness. We acknowledge we deserve punishment,
and we are unworthy of Your mercy, but in view of our needs and in view O God,
of Your son, we ask that You would hear us and deliver us and spare us and make
us to hate our sin and to love righteousness. Our Lord and our God, we pray that
You would deliver us from evil, temporal, spiritual, and eternal, and that You
would confer upon us Your spiritual blessings. We ask on behalf of Your church
that You would build her up, that You would protect her unity, that You would
protect her witness, that You would sanctify us by Your word.
We pray O Lord for our nation, embattled within and without, a culture that is
crumbling, a people who are becoming estranged from the very first principles of
our land. We ask O God that You would protect