Hunger & Thirst (part 1) - Hunger

Introduction.  Although everyone wants to be fit, there is a great obstacle standing in the way. Most resolutions to eat less are made while we are full. After a big meal, it is easy to plan the small meals that will bring our weight down, but putting those plans into action becomes nearly impossible when hunger and the desire for food become powerful.

But more than just a need, hunger is a simple pleasure of life. It creates delight as it is being satisfied. Many find great pleasure in eating “comfort foods.” We can enter a restaurant with little hunger and find the aroma of the bread and sizzling meat irresistible. After a good meal we often feel life doesn’t get much better. God agrees:

• a man has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be joyful: Eccl 8:15 (see also 2:24; 3:13; 5:18; 9:7)

This pleasure is designed to create gratitude and appreciation toward our Father and Creator. God doesn’t want us to begin any meal without giving thanks, because He knows how important it is to our spiritual health. Since we become hungry many times in a day, it is the perfect way to keep our relationship with God warm and close.

• For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with gratitude; 5 for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. 1 Tim 4:4-5

But there is also an important spiritual application to hunger. ​This pleasant activity created by God for our enjoyment is used as a parable to illustrate our spiritual circumstances. What food does to our body, God’s word does for our soul. ​

Just as we feel pleasure and satisfaction in eating, God wants us to feel that same pleasure and satisfaction in our spiritual food. Just as no matter how satisfied we are after a meal we will become hungry again soon after, so also no matter how much we know of God and His word, we always should become hungry for more day by day. This was the very lesson God sought to teach Israel.

• And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Deut. 8:3-4

God knew His people could learn and would greatly benefit from feeling the same hunger and delight for the words He spoke to them as they did the food they ate. During the temptation Jesus quoted this verse, revealing which one was more delightful to Him as well as the great power such hunger can create during times of temptation.

• And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. 3 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”  4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”  Mt 4:2-4

If this could help Jesus after a 40 day fast, think of how helpful it could be for us! His hunger was acute, and His body doing all it could to compel Him to eat. Yet Jesus set it aside because He had a greater hunger in His soul. The point is simple yet profound. God created man with a hunger for food not only for the body, but also for the soul.

For this reason and possibly others this hunger found its way into the select group Jesus pronounced blessed in His sermon on the mount.

• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled. Mt. 5:6

When we develop this hunger and thirst we will be blessed (happy, fortunate, well off, extolled). There is something very important in this concept and we would be wise to take some time and consider what we can do to gain or strengthen it. It is the heart of how we will become righteous and strong in God’s kingdom and Jesus revealed that such hunger can be satisfied and we will be greatly blessed if we seek it.
Even Job, thousands of years ago knew this and was acting upon it. Clearly this was one of the reasons why God could say I have “ none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8).

• “I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. Job 23:10

Job saw the connection between the strengthening power of God’s word to his soul and the strengthening power of food to his body. Like Jesus, he too felt that the spiritual sustenance was more important than the physical. This led Peter to say, that just as infants long for their mother’s milk, Christians should “desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby” (1Pet. 2:2-3).

Conclusion. Like our body, our soul also needs sustenance. As our body cries out for food whenever it is hungry, so should our soul. We need to cultivate a spiritual sense of hunger. We need to become more aware of our spiritual need for righteousness and spiritual growth. A need leading us to listen attentively to every class and sermon. A need leading us to read our Bibles, pray for wisdom and meditate constantly.
Just as physical appetite keeps us coming for more food without losing the ability to savor and enjoy it, so also does God’s word to those who have cultivated the same attitude toward spiritual things. After feeding the five thousand, Jesus noted their excitement at His gift of free bread. Yet Jesus had a strong warning. They had learned the wrong lesson! He was offering a much better food than bread. If we labor only for the food that perishes, we too will ultimately perish. But if we work for the food which endures to eternal life, we will live forever.

• “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal.”  Jn 6:27

We don’t even have to forage for this food. Jesus has prepared a lavish spiritual banquet and placed it in the gospel. All we have to do is work for it and eat it.