“And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be
filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.” Ephesians 5:18-19
The fourth beatitude gives us a serious test to determine our
relationship with Christ. Do we continually hunger and thirst after His righteousness – to know what He would have us do in every situation? Like every other beatitude this one ends with a promise and, as always, God’s promise is directly related to the need described in the beatitude.
Here the Lord promises that He will “satisfy” the quenching thirst and
hunger in our lives. The Greek word used is interesting. Matthew uses it multiple times in Matthew 2 where it is translated fulfilled. We have a
burning thirst and raging hunger? God will fulfill it. This also gives us an insight.
God fulfills our need to the degree that we have a need. Some of us have a desire to know God that is on the infant level. Scripture
says God meets that need. Peter talks of “newborn babes, (who) desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby”. These believers know the spiritual“ A,B,C’s” of their faith but not much more. All believers start out here but no one is supposed to stay at this level of growth. Paul write to the Corinthians “Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ”. A person who stays at this level of desire to know Christ is called worldly.
What can we learn? We see the first step to God filling and satisfying our thirst and hunger is that we have that desire in our heart. We see this in Psalm 37:4. “Delight yourself in the Lord: and He shall give thee the desires of your heart.” Compare this to Israelites who when God sent the quail they demanded God recorded that “He gave them the desire of their hearts, but sent leanness into their soul”. Not a desire for righteousness but to consume it on their own lusts.
Remember that the Lord said those who hungered and thirst after righteousness are blessed. This means they are blessed of God for this is the kind of heart that pleases Him. We are also blessed because God fulfills our need – He gives us the desire of our heart.
This is what David says in Psalm 16:11. “You [God] make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” What does this tell us? First, it tells us there is a right path that leads to joy. It is the pursuit of the knowledge of God. Second, God guides on that path. We desire and He leads. He shows the way we should go. Third, this path leads to being blessed by God and that is where true joy comes from in our life. Fourth, God fulfills our desire, not just for a mere lifetime, but for eternity. That is because in heaven we will be with him and will continually grow to know Him. This is not just one of many pursuits – it will be our entire focus. Finally we see that the pursuit to know God is our duty. It is how we grow and mature. It is how we bear fruit and how we allow the Spirit of God to dwell in us. It is not an option. It is the life of a true follower. So we see how the first three beatitudes reveal themselves in the fourth. The first three create a desire – to know God and we to make Him known. When that is what we crave, God fulfills it.