Welcome to Refinery Life Australia.

The Inward Attitudes of a True Disciple is our theme for the next few Sunday mornings.

This series is based on the Beatitudes, found in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Today we are discussing, Delighting The Soul in Fatness.

It is a great blessing to desire earnestly and to receive the things of the Spirit that God will give to those who ask.

Three things stand out about this beatitude.

The universality of the figure in which the beatitude is conveyed.

Hunger and thirst are elemental instinct known to all people, so Jesus’ words spike a responsive chord in every heart.

Taken together, hunger and thirst form a universal figure for an intense desire that is perpetual.

The word translated “filled” is from a word that means to “fatten”, as to fatten cattle on fodder, grain, or grass.

Hence, Jesus’ meaning is “Blessed are those who desire, intensely and perpetually, what God has to give, for their souls shall be made fat on God’s fodder.”

Long ago the prophet Isaiah quoted God as saying, in Isaiah 55:2, Why do you spend money for what is not bread,And your wages for what does not satisfy?Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

The definiteness of the terms to which the beatitude is confined.

Jesus speaks about those who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

Upon no other desire does the blessing fall.

Again the prophet said, in Isaiah 55:2, Why do you spend money for what is not bread,And your wages for what does not satisfy?Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,And let your soul delight itself in abundance.

There is a bread that is not the Bread of Life and drink that does not satisfy.

Like a coin that has been in circulation for too long, the word righteousness has lost weight and value through years of misuse that it is almost too light and thin to convey Jesus’ meaning.

As Jesus used it, righteousness means a right standing before God, a right relationship with God through Christ.

Blessed are those who long to be right with God, for upon the atoning merits of Christ they shall be.

But to a Christian, righteousness should also mean what it meant to Christ, to do the will of the Father.

We are filled then the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us and when His Holy Spirit works the works of God through our lives.

The quality of the condition that is called blessed.

This beatitude describes a blessed process by which the soul grows to be like God.

We hunger and thirst.

We eat and drink and are satisfied, but in a matter of hours hunger and thirst return, and we repeat the process.

Blessed is the process of hungering and thirsting after righteousness and of being filled, for by this process we grow and develop as Christians.

Blessed is the one whose appetite for spiritual food and drink is growing, for they will be filled again and again.

Let’s consider three questions today about this beatitude.

Until next time

Stay in the Blessings

2024 IS A YEAR OF DECISIONS AND OPEN DOORS

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