seated please. We're teaching and preaching about the Beatitudes in our Sunday morning series of messages. And this week I decided to write my own Beatitudes that reflect the modern world that we live in and the way that we think in the 21st century. Let me see if any of these will ring your bell this morning. Blessed are the rich, for they shall not want. Blessed are the powerful, they shall rule the world. Blessed are the beautiful, they shall be adored. Blessed are the influential, they shall be followed. Blessed are the healthy, they shall have long life. Blessed are the intelligent, they will figure it out. All right. Now, let's hear what the Bible says. Matthew chapter 5. I want to read verses 3 through 12 out loud to you this morning. This is the opening portion of the Sermon on the Mount that Christ taught while he was engaging in his earthly ministry. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all men are of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. And everybody said. Thank you, Father, for the word of God. We thank you for the truth that it contains and for the way that it works in the lives, Father, of the believers, those who call themselves Christians, those who would be in the number of being God's children. And Father, I do pray that you would speak to us this morning as we are, your dear children. Father, that she would show us some truths this morning that we can put into practice in our own individual walks with you. Father, I do pray if there'd be anybody in our midst today who is not a child of God, that that means they do not know you as their Savior. They cannot rightly call you Heavenly Father, that she would show them their need for salvation this morning, that she would draw them to you. And today they would find the beautiful gift of salvation only afforded by the grace of Jesus. for their ever-living soul this morning. Father, I do pray that you would just be with your word this morning. Help us to speak to us and to mold us and to make us the men and women of God that you desire for us to be. And we'll forgive you all the thanks in advance, Father, for the things that you're going to do. We pray these things and ask them in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, we've talked about this before, the Beatitudes that Christ taught go against the grain of how the world thinks. The world thinks the rich and the powerful and the beautiful and the influential and the healthy and the intelligent, that's the way to pursue life. But Christ is teaching things that would be, I think, classified very easily as counter-cultural and at times counter-intuitive. They go against human logic. They go against what we would call rational thinking or even sane thought. God is going to do some things or cause us to do some things that wouldn't make sense in the human realm. They don't make sense to society as a whole. But God is going to show you how He is going to work through those things that don't make a whole lot of sense to us in the spiritual realm. You know, I like to say this. When you do something, when the Bible teaches you to do something and it doesn't make any sense to you at all, but you give in, you yield to it, and you do it anyway, and you get these awesome results, that's a good indication that God is real and that He's at work in your life. And so you've got to accept those things and embrace those things so that you can understand that's how God does work in our lives. They don't always make sense. They don't always fall into place with our rational logic or the human frame of thinking. You know, the Beatitudes so far have been kind of difficult for us to wrap our minds around. You know, blessed are the poor, and people don't want to be poor generally. And blessed are they that mourn. And again, mourning is not something that we seek after. We would rather avoid mourning and grief if we could. And even the last one we talked about two weeks ago, meekness. And meekness is not a thing that we think about, boy, I want to be a meek person when I grow up. Right? Because we associate meekness with weakness, even though we know that's not the case. But still, that's kind of how society has categorized or indexed meekness. And so we've kind of been acclimated to that way of thinking. But today, this beatitude, we can all relate to. It's about being hungry. Everybody gets hungry. We're born hungry. We come out of the womb crying and clamoring for something to eat. It never leaves us. Somebody say amen. We are always hungry. I mean, how many right now say, you know what? I could eat. Right? I mean, you just had breakfast, right? Or you had a donut at Tweeners. Excuse me, bad for you. But you could eat, right? You know, we all eat. We all have that appetite for feeding ourselves and filling ourselves. Babies are born hungry. Children are convinced they will not survive without their mid-afternoon snack. Adults are accustomed to their own delicate feeding schedules. Amen? You know? I was always taught, you know, it's three square meals a day. You know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But for me, it's like six small meals per day. Every three to four hours, I eat, and I'm satisfied that way. Like, for breakfast, I have one protein cookie. It's not a cookie like you would get, you know, in the bakery. It's a protein bar, but it's in the shape of a cookie. I have that with coffee. That's my breakfast. But then about three hours later, I need a snack. Somebody help me this morning. Because that's not enough to tie this big boy over. Somebody say amen. And then I'll eat a lunch, and I'll have a high-protein lunch. And then, again, another snack in the afternoon. And my go-to snack is raw cauliflower or celery. I know you don't like it, but I do. That's what I do. But I'm used to eating that way. And then I'll have a, Kathy's a wonderful cook. She makes me a good meal at night. But even before bed, there's going to be a handful of something before I go to bed so I don't die in the middle of the night of starvation. And when that delicate balance, that delicate schedule gets upset, we have this new term in America called getting hangry. It's hunger and anger combined. And it can be very volatile when somebody's hungry and that need is not met. Somebody please say amen. I've even used that in marriage counseling. You know, when I hear a lot, well, my husband always loses temper, and my first advice is, are you feeding him well? Come on. It's important. It's important. Hungry. Another part is being thirsty. That goes right along with being hungry. It's a companion feeling to hunger is thirst. We all get thirsty as well. Speaking of which, we all get thirsty as well. And we want to quench that thirst. And the best way to quench your thirst is with water, right? We quench our thirst with water. And I've done some reading on this over the years, and you probably know these things already. But dehydration will occur well before starvation. I was telling Brother Tom, I think it was yesterday, we were talking about heart issues, like physical heart issues, things of that nature, and I was telling him that back in 2018, 2019, we were sitting at home in the evening on a Friday night, and I had these intense chest pains. I really thought I was having a heart attack. We called 911, ambulance came, the EMT, the fire department came, and they started to attend to me, and they put me up to the EKG, and they were doing all these different vital signs, everything like that, and they got done. They said, well, Mark, here's the problem. You're dehydrated. Dehydration can have a very adverse effect on your body very, very quickly. And so you can die of dehydration in three days or less time. Three days or less time. Now, you're not going to believe this, but it's true. You can go 30 to 40 days without eating. Now, I can't, but I mean, you could. Three days, no water, you're not going to make it probably. 30 days without eating, you'll be thinner, you'll be angrier, but you'll be okay. Right? And so that's important. But you know, hunger and thirst are feelings and emotions, not emotions, but the feelings and things that we go through in life. We all understand this. You know, this teaching that Christ is going to lay on us this morning about being hungry and thirsty, every one of us can relate to these kinds of things. Now we know the hunger and thirst that Christ is teaching about isn't so much about the physical hunger and thirst, but more about the spiritual hunger and thirst. What are our appetites in the spiritual realm? You know, these aren't negatives that Christ is trying to hammer us with, but positives that will help us to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. You know, if we have the right appetite, if we're pursuing after the right things in the spiritual realm, it will make us more spiritually healthy. And spiritual health leads to a stronger faith. Spiritual health leads to a stronger faith. And spiritual weakness, guess what, leads to a weaker faith. And we've seen the ebb and flow of our faith in our lifetimes, if we're honest about that, where we've been high on the mountain and nothing, we were almost invincible in our minds. We've also been down in the valley. We had questions, we had doubts, we had concerns. Amen? You know, this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, I had a bit of a flu bug, a stomach bug. And Tuesday night during revival, I went in my office and watched a live stream from my office. Wednesday, I didn't even come into the property because I felt like whatever I had, I didn't want to give it to somebody else. Someone say amen to that? But Kathy sent me a text around 10 a.m. on Wednesday. She said, what do you offer dinner? I responded, I really have no appetite. She goes, oh, you're really sick. Yeah, I'm really sick. I wasn't faking it. You know, I don't like to do a forced fast, somebody say, man. That's what I should have said. I should have said I'm fasting today. Because that would have set us so spiritually, man. Yeah, she knows if I don't want to eat then I don't feel well And so, you know no appetite in the physical realm is it's a sign There's something wrong with our physical body and no appetite in the spiritual realm or appetite for the wrong things It's an indication of a spiritual problem in our own individual lives. Amen Saints now our inner being has appetites. I'm not talking about for ribeye or for a sandwich or for some kind of dessert, whatever it is. I'm talking about our inner man, our inner woman has, your inner woman, excuse me, has appetites. Like we have appetites for power. We have appetites that are erotic in nature. We have appetites for excitement. We have appetites for attention. We have appetites for maintaining youthfulness. One of the men in our church who attends here frequently, he has a business. And he'll just tell you, he said, we capitalize on a woman's quest for vanity. What'd he said? I said, yeah, you take plastic surgery and laser treatments and skin care products and makeup and hair coloring. And you add all that up, I said, it must be a billion dollar industry. He said, no, Pastor Shry, a trillion dollar industry. How about an appetite for chasing a buzz? alcohol, drugs, whatever it does that lights your fire. Amen? Someone said wealth, money. We have appetites. Those are normal, excuse me, those are normal human appetites. Okay, I'll come down here. Those are normal human appetites. There's nothing wrong with those things. You were born that way. Amen? But once you got, excuse me, born again, bad grammar, born again, it allows your appetites to be changed or reconstructed. Make sense? So now, those things that were once strong allurements or attractions for us, should, if we're growing in the spiritual realm, start to ebb away, to wane in their ability to draw us power, erotica, excitement, attention, youthfulness, chasing a buzz, wealth, whatever the case may be. And so we can begin to follow this new path, these new appetites that cause us to thirst and hunger for righteousness. Righteousness. Things like honesty. We could use more of that in the 21st century. Integrity. We could use more of that in the political realm. Moral uprightness. We could use that in society as a whole. following after Christ, being more Christ-like in our demeanor, in our character, learning to worship Him in spirit and in truth, and experiencing this deepening and strengthening of our faith on a regular basis where we're continually advancing forward for Christ and continually advancing forward in Christ. Make sense, saints? You know, hunger is a craving. My wife will say things like that. I'm craving such-and-such. Last night she was craving pizza. She made a wonderful low-carb pizza. It was delicious. I mean, absolutely delicious. I could have ate the whole thing if I was allowed to, but she said no. Hunger's a craving. A craving gives us the ability, or a craving causes there to be a deep need somewhere. We're craving something. It's not just going to be in the food realm or the physical realm. I'm talking about in the spiritual realm. When we're craving something in the spiritual realm, God has the ability. It's amazing. I'm going to try to explain it to you this morning. God has the ability to fill those cravings in a way that only He can fill those cravings. And there's a to me one of my this is one of my verses. I love to preach this verse I don't preach it very often because it's hard to understand what's being talked about here in Psalm 42 in verse number seven I would read the first part of this this verse just the first four words of the verse deep Calleth unto deep in that deep Deep calleth unto deep. And I've studied this out, I've preached it a few times in my 20 some years as a pastor. And what this verse is talking about is the deep need of man's soul. And I don't think we even can begin to put our finger on all the, or the extremity of the depths of our needs. I mean our real needs, not our felt needs, but our real needs, the ones that God has programmed us with, the ones that we were born with, the ones that we need for our spiritual vitality to continue to go in the right direction, to trend in the upward flow kind of a thing. The need of man's soul, the need of a woman's soul is a very, very deep thing. It's not something that can be hashed out through psychology. It can't be counseled through a man's counsel, like a pastoral counsel, or even a certified counselor can't answer these things. It can't be fixed with medications. It can't be filled with activities and actions and behaviors. It has to be filled by the one who understands the depth of our need more than we do, and that would be the God who created you and me. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, aren't we, saints? And that my soul knoweth right well. God created us. God created us with needs. And God knows every one of our needs better than we know ourselves. And so the deep need of man's soul calleth unto deep. You know, when you ever see calleth in our Bible, with the ETH, it's talking about a continuing action. It never ends. Like there's needs in your soul that you don't realize yet and recognize yet. I don't care if you were saved in 1911, somebody say amen. You still have deep needs in your soul, and your soul continues to cry out to this other deep entity. So the deep need of man's soul cries out to the deep depths of God's inexhaustible resources. That's what it means. How much grace does God have? Can't be measured, right? How much love does God have? Unlimited. How much mercy does God have? It endures forever. Those are things that we don't relate to. Our minds cannot comprehend about everlasting and unconditional and ever and ever and ever. But God has these resources within Himself. He doesn't go outside Himself. He doesn't have to go online and shop for us. He can provide all of our needs from within Himself, and from within His character, out of His great love, out of His abundant mercy, and His undeserving grace into our souls. Amen, saints? So it's a deep need that we have, but it's a deep God who's able to meet every one of those needs. It's an endless supply. You know, there's not a need, there is not a need that God cannot meet. in the spiritual realm. Not one. There is not a need that God cannot meet in the spiritual realm. This idea of hungering, it's a craving, and this thirsting, it's a painful want. It's a painful want that is crying out for the soul to be refreshed. It's a painful want that is Crying out for the soul to be refreshed. We we sang as the deer this morning is our third song and the reason we sang that because It goes so well, uh with the message this morning and that came from uh, partially from psalm 42 where the bible says this As the heart and that heart h-a-r-t Is another word for deer if you were if you lived in england, that would be a common word for a deer Uh in england as the heart Paneth after the water brooks So paneth my soul after thee. Oh God my soul does what Saints? Thirsteth for God for the living God when shall I come and appear before God that word heart there for the insurance company called the Hartford That's their logo. It's a big red deer somebody say man the heart in Israel would have been a Persian fallow deer aren't they cute Well, but it tastes good, too. Hungry and thirsty, right? But the heart is painting after the water brooks. The picture that's being painted here is this deer is on the run because it's running from a predator. Maybe a wolf or a bear or a mountain lion. Those are all things that are common in that part of the world. And they're chasing this deer. And this deer has been running for a while. And the heart rate is up. And the exhaustion level is getting higher and higher. And that deer knows that it wants one thing more than anything else. It wants to stop and get a drink of water so it can continue on. I'm about to get to glory right now. Watch this, saints. We also, as blood-bought believers, are being chased by a predator on a regular basis, whether it's the world or the flesh or the devil. If it's the accuser of the brethren, your adversary of the devil, whatever the case may be, we're being continually pursued by a predator. And the thing that we have to be able to do is to stop and get a drink of water from the living Word of God. It'll make you want to carry on. It'll cause you to remember who you belong to. It'll remember whose life your hand is in. And aren't you glad that we're in His grip? And His grip don't slip. Amen. Sure. It's a painful thirsting. It's needed to refresh the soul. Here's the thing about appetites and thirst. You know this is true. Appetites and thirst can be quenched and satisfied, but they come back again. Don't they? My mom, my mom at Thanksgiving was The things she prepared, absolutely amazing. I don't think I'll ever forget them. I don't ever forget them. It started about two days before she started making what she called homemade noodles. She'd roll them out. She'd cut them up. She'd lay them all out on newspaper to dry for a few days. I mean, our laundry would be this noodle drying place of passage that you dare not tread upon. Somebody say amen. Mom's making noodles. We're going to be smart about this. And then on Thanksgiving Day, she cooked noodles in chicken broth with real pieces of chicken. Glory to God. I mean, homemade noodles. Mashed potatoes. I don't like these, but candied sweet potatoes. I don't care for those. Green bean casserole, which is a Hoosier dish. Homemade yeast rolls. It's ridiculous. I mean, the biggest turkey she could find. And then she would put the stuff, or the food inside the bird, she called it stuffing. Then she'd make another dish of it outside the bird she called dressing. Same thing, different geography, somebody say it, man? Dad and sisters love pumpkin pie. She'd make two pumpkin pies. I don't like pumpkin pie, but I am her only begotten son. She made me apple pie every Thanksgiving. There was cool whip. There was ready whip. There was all kinds of whip going on, somebody sang in. I mean, absolutely amazing. I mean, it was the classic carb load. 14 years old, I could put away some noodles, and some taters, and some pie, and some green bean casserole. Dressing is nothing. Take a bite or two. Oh, cranberry sauce, too, for your weirdos. But anyway, she had that, too. Something for everyone this morning, amen, even the weirdos, amen. And we would eat. I would eat, my two sisters would eat, my parents would eat, my grandparents would eat. I mean, just gorge ourselves. I mean, just a display of absolute gluttony. Can I have an amen, please? The adult man always pushed back and did their top button. People who are tooth don't do that kind of stuff. But anyway, you need to push back and say this, I don't believe I'll ever eat again. about 6 p.m. going through the fridge. What are you doing, Grandpa? I'm about to make me a turkey sandwich. Watch this. Everybody say, Amen. Because appetites come. They can be satisfied, and then they come again. And thirst comes, it can be satisfied, and it comes again. So this is something that we're working on continually in the Christian life. You know, once you get a taste for righteousness, I want to say this very clearly, once you get a taste for righteousness, it shouldn't go away. You should want more of it. like the second helping of apple pie. I didn't need when I was 14, but I sure wanted more of it. And the same thing is true about the righteous of God. You should want more of it once you get it. And I think this is just me taking the temperature of Christianity in the 21st century from what I've seen. This is not something, it's not maybe against you personally, but things I have seen in modern day Christendom. is I'm not convinced that every Christian has tasted how good God is. Like, they have the intellectual assent. When I say God is good, they say amen. But they've never for themselves experienced how good it is to taste God and to make God a part of the fiber of your being. Not just a mental assent, not just an intellectual knowledge, not just something you've read in a book or heard a man say for 21 years solid now, somebody say amen. But for yourself, you said, yeah, I've tasted God's goodness. And when I tasted God's goodness, my reaction was this more. Oh, taste and see, the Bible says, that the Lord is what, saints? Good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in Him. They have heard it, but never really tasted it. Their mind can comprehend it, but their heart has never received it. I hope that makes sense to you this morning. What does it mean though to hunger and thirst after righteousness? I've got a real short definition of the word righteousness for the context of the thought this morning. Righteousness is simply this. It's a condition accepted or approved by God. I'll say that again. It's a condition accepted or approved by God. It goes beyond your salvation. It means that you want to be right with God and you would desire to stay right with God. The Apostle Paul talked about having a clean conscience toward God, toward the end of his earthly life. He said this, and herein do I exercise myself to always have a conscience void of offense toward God. and toward men. But notice the order of things here. It was God first, men second. You get right with God first, and you'll be amazed how other things begin to fall into place in your Christian life. It's like this supernatural puzzle being put together by the great God of heaven himself. And I've learned this about God. You know, when I was young, we would make the puzzle pieces fit. God does not make the puzzle pieces fit. They fit because God is putting the puzzle together. Does that make sense? It's amazing. You do it and I do it. We try to change people, direct their behavior, put a little bit of pressure on them a little bit, send the goons by to break some kneecaps. Somebody help me this morning, come on. You know, but let God do His work because He's amazing when He works and His mercy and His grace and His unfeasible love and His inexhaustible forgiveness. All those things are at work in our lives and we have to let God do what God is going to do. Get right with God first and other things will fall into proper place. You will be right with people once you are right with God. It's the wrong way of the equation to get right with people first and expect God to fall into place. Say amen, I'll move on. So here's a couple questions for you. Number one, how big is your appetite toward the things of God? Are you hungry or not? I mean, can you say, like I did this about 30 minutes ago, can you say, yeah, I could eat. How strong is your thirst or your desire to be closer to God? You know, that desire to hunger and thirst after righteousness has its problems attached to it. For they shall be what, saints? Filled. Filled. Like there's not room for anything else. Like I couldn't have another bite. I remember one of our young people in our church, you know, he said years ago that, you know, he would be full at dinnertime, but he always had room for dessert because he always had a little compartment right here for desserts. Still true? Still true, right? But when God fills you spiritually, there's not room for anything else at that moment. Your hunger has been satisfied, your thirst has been quenched. Amen? You know, it's the partial or whole mentality. You know, I can still do this today. My wife will bring home one of those roast chicken from Costco. Anybody else? I love those things. I'm not lying to you. I could eat the whole thing in one sitting. And not feel guilty. Amen. Not. Not even a little bit guilty. Now, this has happened. She brings home a Costco chicken. She said, I brought home a chicken for dinner. I'm going to make dinner. I'm going to make you dinner. No lies. One drumstick. and a big old wad of broccoli. And I'm feeling very unloved. Amen? My first question is, what did I do? Number two is, where's the rest of my food? Amen? Right? I would rather have the whole chicken than one drumstick. Please say amen to that. You know, we got to think about the partial or whole mentality in a lot of our Christian life. Could be reduced down to this, I'll just take a drumstick. I'll just take a sip of water. I'll just take the crumbs that fall from the master table. When he says this, you can have the whole bird, you can have the whole gallon, you can have the whole loaf, if you'll simply come after me for these things. And he will fill us to the full, so we're not wanting in those areas again. You know, we've seen a lot, let me give it to you, a spiritual, or a way you can understand it, application. You can have a Christian, a born-again Christian, who's a very moral man. Integrity, character, honesty, I mean, not lacking in any of those areas. Very careful with his speech. I mean, all those things. He checks all the boxes. But when it comes down to compassion or mercy, he has none. It's been a partial filling. It's been a pick-and-choose kind of Christianity. I'll work on this, and I'll work on that, but I'm going to disregard these things. And we see it a lot, especially in churches of our stripe. Somebody's in need, and the question is, well, why are they in need? Well, God bless your ever-living soul. Amen? I'm glad you never had a need, brother or sister. But some people do have needs. And they don't usually need cross-examination, they usually need some compassion, generally speaking. I'm not talking about giving out a weekly handout, but helping people along the way in Christ-likeness. And somebody said amen to that, right? Now, this righteousness has to come from Christ and Christ alone. We don't have any righteousness in and of ourselves. Real quick, as it's written, there is how many righteous? What does none mean? Is none the opposite of all pretty much here? Right. None means none, all means all, right? There is none righteous, no not one. But we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. In God's eyes we don't have anything that's worthy of being called righteous. Here's what here's where we get it from we get it from our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus Philippians 1 11 being filled with the fruits of Righteousness which are by who Saints whom amen Jesus Christ, right? which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God. Same book, different chapter, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, because there is none righteous, no not one, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. That's why we talk about this pursuing of Christ in the Christian life, wanting to be more Christ-like, not being satisfied with sips and bites and crumbs, but looking for the whole loaf, the whole gallon, the whole bird, whatever it is, so we're continually growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. Amen, saints. There was a preacher a long time ago, well, not long ago, a hundred years ago, in London, he got into his pulpit on Sunday night, his very first worship service, and that night he announced that Germany and Great Britain were at war, and the London bombings ensued as he opened up his ministry there in the city of London, England. So what he did was, he had this marvelous idea, he took the church basement, did some reinforcing, some shoring up, and some sandbags along the walls, and he turned the church basement into a bomb shelter. Now get this, for 1688 days straight, He held some kind of service in the basement of that church. Some were evangelistic to win souls, some were compassionate to help those that the war wounded or those who had lost loved ones already in the battle of Britain. We go on and on and on. 1688 days straight. And he got this really rare disease. It was called back then muscular atrophy. We call it maybe ALS today, Lou Gehrig's disease. And his muscles just started giving out. And it didn't take long for him to be pretty much confined to a wheelchair. Amazingly, he never lost his ability to speak. But he was down to the ability to speak and be able to move two fingers at the end of his life. And at the end of his life, he wrote down this. He said, my rules for dying. We have rules for living, he has rules for dying. He said this, number one, I will never complain. I will keep my home bright. I will count my blessings. I will attempt to turn every loss into a gain. Amen? That man knew what it was to hunger and thirst after righteousness. They shall be filled. They shall be satisfied to the full. God is in the filling business. He knows our deep need. He knows what our appetites need to be satisfied. He knows what our thirst needs to be quenched. There's beautiful verses here. For he satisfied the longing soul, and fill up the hungry soul with goodness. John chapter 6, and Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Again, John chapter 4, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in a well of water, springing up into what, saints? Everlasting life. I think you can take our desires and you can reduce them into three categories. We're going to see it here in a moment. Form, food, fashion. form, food, and fashion. And you pursue those things, we all do. We pursue form, we pursue food, we pursue fashion in different ways, in different categories of life. But when we pursue those things and we find those things, you'll find this out, you will leave feeling empty. You'll feel like it didn't satisfy me like I thought it would. It didn't meet the need that I thought it would meet. And so we're reminded in the Bible to seek God first. To seek God first. and his righteousness and his kingdom and let him add these things in your life and by his goodness and by his grace he'll even multiply these things in our lives unexpected blessings from the benevolent hand of our father somebody say amen therefore saying to you also sermon on the mount preaching right here christ teaching here uh middle sermon on the mount uh therefore saying to you take no thought for your life what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than neat in the body, more than raiment? That word raiment means clothing. Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap. Isn't that amazing? nor gather into barns. Also, pretty incredible, because birds don't go hungry, do they, saints? Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, nor do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is, cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little what, saints? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." And everybody said, Amen. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Check your appetites. See what you're hungry for. Maybe you need to make a change this morning and hunger for the things of God and to follow after His Father, we thank you for this time this morning. Thank you for the Word of God, how it challenges us and the things that it impresses into our soul that we know we should be doing and things we should be dismissing from our walk with you. Father, help us to make what we talk about this morning a reality in our Christian life, that we would learn to hunger and thirst after righteousness. And Lord, there are, there's many things that we have appetites for. I'm not excluding myself from them in any way, shape, or form. But I found better things. I found right things. I found good things. Because I've tasted it. I've seen, Lord, how good you can be in my life and in the life of many of these great people this morning. Father, please continue to speak to us and work on hearts. And Lord, again, if there's somebody here who doesn't know you as Savior that today They'd come and we could take the Bible and show them more great truths about your great love and show them the way of salvation that's only afforded through your Son, Jesus Christ. We pray all these things in His name. Amen. Let's all stand. We're gonna sing, Lord, I'm coming home for our closing hymn this morning. If God has spoken to you, would you please take time and speak back to Him? Lord, I'm coming home. ♪ Now I'm coming home ♪ ♪ The paths of sin too long I've trod ♪ ♪ Lord, I'm coming home ♪ ♪ Coming home, coming home ♪ ♪ Born to roam ♪ ♪ Open now thy arms above ♪ ♪ For thy coming home ♪ ♪ I've wasted many precious years ♪ I now repent with better tears. Lord, I'm coming home. Coming home. Lord I'm coming.