Happy Are the Hungry
Matthew 5:6
Take your Bible will you and look with me at Matthew Chapter 5 and verse 6, Matthew Chapter 5, verse 6. As you know, we've been studying the Beatitudes, been studying the Sermon on the Mount. Let me read verses 1 to 6 to set the pace for what comes in verse 6. "And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain and when He was seated, His disciples came unto Him and He opened His mouth and taught them saying, 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 who do hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." Let's pray together as we begin our study tonight.
Father, we thank You for this tremendous truth that we're going to be looking at tonight. And Father, we would desire above all things that the Holy Spirit would teach us. Lord, help us to really get a grip on what this is saying. Help us to dig deeply into the mind of Your truth and deeply into our own lives to search out to see if we respond in the way we ought to. Minister to us, Lord, as we consider the words of Jesus Christ. In who's name we pray, Amen.
In studying this Sermon on the Mount, Matthew Chapter 5 through 7, we are studying the teaching of Jesus Christ. The first great sermon our Lord gives in the New Testament. Now you'll remember that the overall theme of Matthew is to present Christ as king. I only want to remind you of that. Matthew is presenting Christ as king. And so repeatedly through the first part of Matthew as through all the remainder, he emphasizes some element of the kingliness of Christ. Whether it's a kingly line in His genealogy, whether it's the worship of he Magi who are the official king makers, whether it's the fulfilling of the kingly prophecies of the Old Testament, whether it's the dominion that He has over Satan which shows Himself to be a greater ruler than even Satan, whatever it is, Matthew's perspective is to present Christ as king.
Now when he comes to Chapter 5, he presents the words of the king or the manifesto of the kingdom. The truths about this king's kingdom. If indeed He is a king, of what nature is His kingdom. Well, he describes His kingdom in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And we note that it is a spiritual kingdom and its characteristics are spiritual characteristics. So this is a spiritual description of the kingdom of the king. It is just another way to present the fact that Jesus is indeed the king. And if you note at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, verse 28, it says "It came to pass when He had ended these sayings the people were astonished at His doctrine." Why? "For He taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes." Not only were His words the words of a king, but His way was the way of the king. His manner was the manner of the king. The way He spoke was that of a king. It was authoritative. He didn't need to quote anybody. He didn't need to say well, I want you to know this is true because so and so says it's true. The rabbis and the scribes always taught by quoting somebody who was famous. Jesus simply said it. It was not only the word of a king, but it was the way of a king in it's authoritativeness.
Now, as we look at the Sermon on the Mount, we find that it is a masterful presentation of the conditions for entering His kingdom and the characteristics of those who are in His kingdom. It is a manifesto of the kingdom. It is the teaching of living in the kingdom of the king. Now it begins with the introduction here in the first 12 verses. And Jesus introduces this sermon by telling us that it's happiness that He's after. It's blessedness that He is offering. It's really the...you know, any good preacher knows that in the very beginning, you've got to get your people to start listening. You've got to say something that hooks them. And Jesus knows that the world is looking for happiness. That people want to know blessedness. They want to know blissfulness. They want to be happy and have meaning in life and be joyful. And so He starts out by saying I'm offering you happiness. But His presentation is not exactly what they expected. He was offering them happiness in a way they had never heard in their lives and consequently it fascinated them. And by the time He was done, they were more than fascinated, they were absolutely astonished at what He had said.
And so our Lord is offering real happiness, real blessedness, but it is the kind of blessedness that only comes by being a part of His kingdom. These are the truths of His kingdom. And so as I said they express both a necessary condition for entering the kingdom as well as a characteristic of those who dwell in the kingdom. People say are the truths here in the Beatitudes how you get in the kingdom or how you live in the kingdom. And the answer is yes.
They are all about how you are when you come into the kingdom and how you will be as you live in the kingdom. In other words, to enter the kingdom, you must be poor in spirit. And as you live in the kingdom you continue recognize your spiritual poverty. In order to enter the kingdom, you must mourn over your sin. And as you continue living in the kingdom as a son of God, you will mourn over your sin. In order to enter the kingdom, you must come in meekness, not pride. A proud man can't enter and once you're in the kingdom meekness continues to be your attitude as you look at God and as God becomes more and more wonderful as you study and learn more. And in order to enter the kingdom, you must hunger and thirst after righteousness. And once you're in the kingdom, you'll continue to hunger and thirst for more of that same righteousness. So it is both a condition for entrance and a characteristic of living in the kingdom. This is a description of coming in and living in His kingdom.
Now let's look at verse 6, this particular aspect. "Blessed are they who are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, for they shall be filled." Now this Beatitude speaks of a very strong desire. It speaks of driving pursuit. It speaks of a passionate force inside of us. An ambition, if you will. And ambition is a word that can be used in a good sense. It also can be used in a bad sense. There are a lot of things that people strive for and pursue and have a passion for and have ambition to see fulfilled and there are a lot of strong desires that are perverted, that going the wrong way.
For example, I think of Lucifer. Lucifer was God's most glorious creation. The most wonderful thing that God ever made. And Lucifer had a consuming resolute ambition. He had a passion that was really a driving force within his mind. What was it? In Isaiah 14:13, it tells us what the passion of Lucifer was. "I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also on the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High." His ambition was to belike God. He was hungry, but he was, mark it, power hungry. He was power hungry. He had a resolute ambition and a consuming passion, but it was for power. He was power hungry. And in the response of God we see, God says, "You shall be brought down to Sheol, to the sides of the pit. You'll not realize your ambition."
And then there was Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar who was the king of Babylon, the greatest of all the world empires. Nebuchadnezzar who was a monarch like none after him. Nebuchadnezzar who ruled a great dominion of men. Nebuchadnezzar the most glorious king of history, and Nebuchadnezzar had a strong desire. In Daniel Chapter 4, it tells us of his desire, in verse 30. "The king spoke and said is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power." If Lucifer was power hungry, then Nebuchadnezzar was praise hungry.
So praise hungry was he that he praised himself and God reacted. "Oh Nebuchadnezzar, they kingdom is departed from thee and they'll drive thee from men and they dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. They shall make thee to eat grass like oxen and seven times Passover thee until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men." Lucifer was power hungry and Nebuchadnezzar was praise hungry. And neither of them ever saw the fulfillment of their ambition.
There's another individual I would draw to your attention who had ambition. There are many, but I'm just giving you an illustration. In Luke Chapter 12, in verse 17 we meet the rich fool. "The rich fool said within himself what shall I do, because I have no place to bestow my crops. And he said this will I do. I will pull down my barns and I will build greater barns and there will I bestow all my crops and all my goods." He wasn't about to share them with anybody. He was just going to pile them up. "And I will say to my soul, soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many, many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry." He had ambition. He was possession hungry, possession hungry. And you know what God said to him? "You fool, this night they soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall those things be which you have provided?"
Oh there have been plenty of people with ambition, power hungry, praise hungry, possession hungry. We could even say of this man, he was pleasure hungry, eat, drink, and be merry. But they were all fools. They were hungry for the wrong thing. Nothing wrong with ambition. Nothing wrong with passion. Nothing wrong with a resolute drive. Nothing wrong with a great desire if it's for the right thing. You say, what's the right thing? Go back to verse 6, that's the right thing. "Happy are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness." Now this is a strong statement. Food and water are necessities, beloved. You remember that? That's right. They're necessities, so is righteousness. That's the first indication of this Beatitude. You need righteousness like you need food and water.
It isn't wrong to hunger. It isn't wrong to thirst. It is the most normal thing. It is the most common drive. It is the most necessary drive, and so it is with righteousness. Our physical life depends on food and water. Our spiritual life depends on righteousness. You can't live physically without food and water, and you'll never live spiritually without righteousness.
Think of the physical aspect and maybe it'll give you an idea of the intensity that the words of Jesus have here. Ever since Joseph met his brothers in Egypt in Genesis, the world has been cursed with famine and probably even before that. Famine came to Rome in 436 B.C. and it cause thousands of people to literally throw themselves into the Tiber River and drown themselves, rather than die of starvation. Famine struck England in 1005 and all Europe suffered famine in the years 879, 1016, and 1162. And even in the 19th Century, the last Century with some advances made in technology and commerce, hunger stalked Russia, China, India, and Ireland so that masses of humanity died. And today it goes on. Today in parts of Africa and parts of India, thousands die of malnutrition and the accompanying diseases. Hundreds more perish in parts of Latin America. Hunger is like war. It's like pestilence. It just kills. It just consumes.
And so food and water are so necessary, but all the horrors that are imaginable of physical hunger pale when compared to the horror of spiritual hunger that is unfulfilled. Spiritual thirst that is unquenched. Physical elements are only a small token of a deeper more serious hunger that faces mankind, and that is a spiritual hunger. And Jesus is here saying that the real thing that a man needs is righteousness. And anybody coming into my kingdom and anybody living in my kingdom has as great an appetite and thirst for that as a man does for food and water.
Unsaved people do have ambition. They have hunger and they have thirst, physically. And I guess they have thirst for happiness and hunger for fulfillment, but they seem to find it in the wrong place. In fact, Peter compares the unsaved to a dog that goes back and licks up its vomit. Peter compares the unsaved to a pig that goes back and wallows in its own mire. You see the world is trying to feed on what is not nourishing. The world is trying to feed on that which cannot fulfill its need. The heart of every person in the world, believer or unbeliever, the heart of every man ever made was created for a...with a hunger for God. But man tries to satisfy the hunger for God with all the false things. With the garbage, the husks of the hogs, like the prodigal son. There he is. His heart hungers to be fed and he feeds on the hogs' food. The dog goes back and licks its vomit. They don't seek the bread of life. They seek with the scripture says that which is not bread.
Jesus offered Himself as that bread. He knew people were hungry. He offered Himself as that water. He knew they were thirsty. Jeremiah said it vividly. This is Jeremiah 2:13, listen to what it says, "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters and have hewed them out cisterns," what kind, "broken cisterns that can hold no water." In other words, God has made man with a thirst and a hunger for Him, but man refuses the well of living water and makes himself broken cisterns that can't even hold water. It's so sad to see people hunger and thirst for the wrong things. Hunger and thirst for happiness and meaning and fulfillment and inevitably try to fill themselves up with self-indulgent, pleasures, possessions, power and praise.
The prodigal son, he longed for the pleasure. He long to possess, he longed for the popularity of a riotous life, but he went hungry in his soul and finally he had the sense to come to himself and say how many of my father's servants have bread enough and to spare. Why am I doing this? And he went back to his father's house and he was given a feast and that feast is a picture of a spiritual feast. The world in its riotous living tries to fill itself with the husks of the swine. Tries to fill itself with the pleasures of sin and it comes up absolutely empty and those who respond to the Spirit of God come running back to the Father and there is a feast to fill up the empty heart, to fill up the hungry soul, the thirsty soul.
1 John Chapter 2 warns that you can't get satisfied in the world. "Love not the world neither the things that are in the world." What's in the world? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and none of that stuff abides forever. It's just wind. So right at the start ask yourself this, as we begin our study, what are you hungry for? Power, praise, possessions, pleasure? Are you feeding yourself on the husks of the swine? Are you like the dog who licks his own vomit? The pig that wallows in his own mire? Or are you looking to the only real source? Because the answer you give to that question will determine whether you're in the kingdom or not. What do you hunger for?
The blessed hunger and thirst after righteousness. Those in His kingdom hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now let's ask some key questions as we have for each of the Beatitudes. Question number one, how does this Beatitude fit in with the others? How does it fit in with the others? Well notice, first of all, in verse 3, it says "Blessed are the poor in spirit." We talked about the fact that that means morally bankrupt. That is the recognition that you are destitute of any righteous thing. That is the recognition that before God you stand absolutely stripped naked and empty. That is the recognition when you've added up all the pluses of your life, they are zero. That is the recognition that you cannot help yourself. You are hopeless. You are sinful.
And that is followed by the next one. "Blessed are they that mourn." And that is the response to that recognition. When you see yourself and you're broken in your spirit. You will mourn. Here is the sorrow that comes over the moral bankruptcy. And then there is meekness. And meekness says look at me in comparison to God, I am nothing. And meekness is humility and when you see your sin and you are broken and you mourn, you will take a place of meekness before God. And in your meekness before God, you realize that the only hope you have of ever knowing righteousness is to seek it at his hand and so you come to the fourth Beatitude and you hunger and thirst after what you know is not yours on your own.
So the progression is simple. Martin Lloyd Jones writes, "This Beatitude follows logically from the previous ones. It is a statement to which all the others lead. It is the logical conclusion to which they come. It is something for which we should all be profoundly thankful and grateful to God. I do not know of a better test that anyone can apply to himself or herself in this whole matter of the Christian profession than a verse like this. If this verse is to you one of the most blessed statements of the whole of scripture, you can be quite certain you're a Christian. If it is not, you had better examine your foundations again."
Because if you have been broken in your spirit and are overwhelmed with your sinfulness and you mourn over your sinfulness and then you look up to recognize the holiness of God, the response should be that you hunger and thirst for what He has that you need. And if you do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, you are not a citizen of God's kingdom. Our society chases all the wrong things, you see. They chase money, materialism, fame, popularity, pleasure, usually all because of greed, not need, but it's all the wrong stuff. And you know the sad part of it is, even though the United States grants us the pursuit of happiness, people don't find it, because they define happiness in a wrong way. Happiness is money. Happiness is pleasure. Happiness is having material things. Here it says, happiness is brokenness, happiness is mourning, happiness is meekness, happiness is hungering and thirsting after righteousness.
But you'll notice the response to each of those. Look back at verse 3 again. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They shall be comforted. They shall inherit the earth. They shall be filled." Isn't that fabulous? If you sum that all up, you know what you get? You get everything there is. You're filled, you inherit the earth, you're comforted and you inherit the kingdom of heaven. That's fabulous. In other words, on God's condition everything is going to be yours. And here's the point, the world is working like mad to gain material things to gain money, to gain all of this stuff, when if they came into God's kingdom on His terms, they'd get it all in the end anyway. Right? It's the whole point.
You people are breaking your neck to get what God wants to give. See? And going at it the way you're trying to go to get it, you'll never get it coming on God's conditions where you don't try to get it, you'll get it. In other words, it's available as a gift. You just can't earn it. So Jesus is saying, why are you working so hard to get all of this? The Jews, man, they were working to bring the kingdom. They were trying their best to be comforted in a very difficult situation. And they wanted to inherit the earth so bad, they could taste it. And they were trying to fill up their life with meaning. And they were chasing all in the wrong way and the Lord simply says to them, I'll give you everything you want. I'll give you the kingdom. I'll give you present comfort. I'll fill your life with everything it needs to satisfy. I'll give you the whole earth. You can have the whole deal if you'll just come on my conditions, brokenness, mournfulness, meekness, hungering, thirsting for righteousness.
And I guess maybe the key to the whole thing is this meekness thought because the meek person is the person who's broken over sin and seeks God's gift. There's no pride. He just seeks God's gift. In every example of meekness, listen to this, in every example of meekness in the Bible, the underlying motive was always that the individual knew God's promise. Now I'll say it again, in every example of meekness in the Bible, the underlying motive was always that the individual knew God's promise. For example, take Abraham, last week, I told you...two weeks ago, I told you that Abraham was meek, because when Lot and he were going to decide who gets the land, right, he said, Lot you take whatever you want. He was meek. But you know what he knew in his mind? God had promised him the whole thing anyway. He didn't care if Lot had a little of it temporarily.
You see meekness can always take its place because it knows in the end everything belongs to it. Remember David? David would raise his sword against Saul. Remember I told you he could have killed Saul, but instead he just cut off his robe. Why? Because David knew he was the king and he was going to get it all anyway, why did he have to worry? In other words, the basis is God's promise and once we believe God's promise we don't have to try so hard to get all this stuff. I read my Bible this way, God says MacArthur, you're my child, you'll inherit the earth, so why should I spend all my time on my own right now trying to get it. Doesn't make any sense, it's going to be mine anyway. I don't mind some other people borrowing it for a while. It's all coming back to me based on His promise.
You see, this is the underlying thing people. You have to realize. This is the whole basis of motivation in the Sermon on the Mount. You enter God's kingdom and you know it's all yours anyway, see. Only can it become yours at His hand. And later on this becomes the motivation for other things. If you look at verse 40 of Matthew 5. "If a man sues you at the law and takes away your coat, let him have your cloak also." Why? You're going to have all you need in the kingdom. What do you care? "And whosoever wants you to go a mile, go two. Give to him that asks thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away."
Listen, don't hang onto the stuff of the world. Don't try to be possessive. Don't try to grab it all, it'll all be yours anyway. So share it. Now you see with that kind of a heart, with that kind of a spirit, you can have the right ambition. If you're saying look all I want God is Your righteousness, all I want is to be meek before You, all I want is to have Your kingdom on Your terms. You know His promise in the end is that you'll inherit everything, everything.
In fact, the apostle Paul even said to the Corinthians, "All things are yours," didn't he, "and you're Christ's and Christ is God's." It's all yours anyway. It's all yours. And so here were these Jews and boy they were trying to get the kingdom, they were trying to take the earth. They were trying to be comforted in a discomforting situation. They were trying to fill their lives and they were working like mad to do it and the Lord said if you just come on my terms, I'll give you the whole thing.
He said it this way in Chapter 6 also, verse 33, listen to this one. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His," what, "righteousness and," what, "all these things shall be," what, "added unto you." Added unto you. You see, it's all yours anyway on God's terms. So we say happy are the hungry. There's pain in verse 3, broken in spirit. There's pain in verse 4, mourning. There's pain in verse 5, meekness, the death of self. That's suicide, it's painful, but there's the comfort of verse 6. Hungering and thirsting, that's the solution. You get to the place where you start to reach out to God. It's kind of negative at the beginning. You just hurt a lot. You see your sin and then you begin to move toward God.
You begin to hunger and thirst after righteousness. So that's why this Beatitude fits here because it makes sense. You take a man broken over sin, you take a woman broken over sin, meek before a holy God knowing he has nothing he can do in himself to gain or inherit anything, who then reaches out in a hunger and thirst for that which only God can give. See?
Let's take a second question, what does it mean to hunger and thirst? We've already hinted at it. It has to do with desire. And by the way, a great and intense desire. The force of Christ's words here are just powerful particularly in that culture, maybe not so much in our culture because we don't know what it is to be hungry. We don't know what it is to thirst and so we don't understand this. When you think of thirsty, you think of you've gone out and run around a little bit and you're thirsty. You don't know what it is to be in the midst of a drought where you've had no water for days.
When you think of hunger you mean its 1 o'clock and you're used to eating at 12:15. You don't know what it means to be hungry. You don't know what it is to go without food, but the idea is desperation. There's an interesting book written by Major V. Gilbert entitled The Last Crusade and in 1966 issue of National Christian Magazine, E. M. Blaiklock reiterated the story that this Major Gilbert tells in this book The Last Crusade. And the book is written about the British liberation of Palestine in World War I. If you remember General Allenby was a part of the liberation of Palestine in World War I and Blaiklock tells the story about this Major and this is what he says.
"Driving up from Beersheba, a combined force of British Australians and New Zealanders were pressing on the rear of the Turkish retreat over arid desert. The attack outdistanced its water carrying camel train." In other words, they got so far ahead of their water, they were separated. "The water bottles were empty, the sun blazed pitilessly out of a sky where the vultures wheeled about expectantly. Our heads ached," writes Major Gilbert, "our eyes became bloodshot and dim in the blinding glare. Our tongues began to swell. Our lips turned to a purplish black and begin to burst.
Those who dropped out of the column were never seen again, but the desperate force struggled on to Sheria. There were wells at Sheria and had they been unable to take the place by nightfall, thousands were doomed to die of thirst. And so we fought that day," writes Major Gilbert, "as men fought for their lives. We entered Sheria's station on the heels of the retreating Turks. The first objects which met our view were the great stone cisterns full of cold, clear, drinking water. And in the still night air, the sound of water running into the tanks could be distinctly heard maddening in its nearness. Yet not a man murmured when orders were given for the battalions to fall in two deep facing the cisterns.
He describes the stern priorities, the wounded, those on guard duty, then company by company. It took four hours before the last man had his drink of water. And in all that time, they had been standing 20 feet from a low stone wall on the other side of which were thousands of gallons of water. I believe," Major Gilbert concludes, "that we all learned our first real Bible lesson on the march from Beersheba to Sheria wells. If such were our thirst for God and for righteousness, for His will in our life, a consuming, all embracing, preoccupying desire, how rich in the fruit of the spirit would we be."
Now that's what Jesus is trying to say. He's talking about hunger and thirst to people who understood what it meant. The Greek verbs are just very powerful. Peinentes means to be needy, to suffer hunger. It has the idea of a deep hunger, not just superficiality. The word dipsao to suffer thirst again. It carries the idea of a genuine thirst. And here they are the strongest impulses in the natural realm. And by the way, they are in a continuous present participle. The ones who are hungering. The ones who are thirsting. It is a continuous thing. And so I say to you beloved, this is not only the one...the condition of the one coming in, but this is the condition of the one in the kingdom.
You know, I'll put it this way, when I came to Jesus Christ, I hungered and thirsted for His righteousness and now that I know Him, I hunger and thirst for more of it right? That's what He's saying. In fact, Lenski, the great commentator says "This hunger and this thirst increases in the very act of being satisfied." Luke adds a note to this. Luke has a parallel passage and he adds the word now. "Blessed are they who are hungering now." It is a present, it is a continuous thing. It is a moment by moment way of life. When you become a Christian, you don't stop. Listen, look at your life. If you don't hunger and thirst for righteousness, there's a question whether you're even in the kingdom. Let me give you an illustration, Moses. Moses had seen God. Moses, when he was in the wilderness for 40 years, had God call him. And he came and he saw God in a blazing burning bush. He had seen God. He saw the Shekinah of God as it were blazing in the bush and God said to him, "Take your shoes off Moses, you're standing on holy ground." And later on when God went back to lead Israel out of that land, he saw God. He saw God's hand in the miracles, the plaques. He saw God when God parted the Red Sea and let them all walk through and then drown all of the Egyptian army. He saw God as they moved guided by that great Shekinah glow of God in the heavens. He saw God.
He knew what it was to hunger after God and be filled. But you know something in obedience to God's command, he built a tabernacle. And when the tabernacle was completed, the glory of God came into that place because Moses said to Him, "God I want to see Your glory." You might say Moses, enough is enough guy. I mean, you have really seen a lot of stuff. And Moses would say, but not enough. God took him up into the mountain and God showed him a flaming finger that scratched the law of God in the tables of stone in the side of a mountain. And when Moses came down it wasn't enough. But he said, "Show me Your glory." And when he came down, he was lit up. And as the glory began to diminish, he went back up the mountain and he looked again at God's glory and then he came down. And then he went back again. It was never enough. It was never enough.
"I beseech you," he says in Exodus 33:18. "I beg you show me your glory." You see this is the character of a son of the kingdom. You see he never is satisfied. There is unsatisfaction in the very satisfaction itself. Always the hunger for more. I think of David. David, the man after God's own heart, David who walked in close communion with God, David who wrote the Psalm "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. His rod and His staff they comfort me," he'd known God. He'd know God in his life. God had protected him. God had cared for him. God had guided Him. God had directed him. Zeal for God's house had eaten him up. The pain that fell on God, fell on him. He knew God in an intimacy. You would say oh there's a man who knows God. A man out of whom the Psalms flowed like water out of a stream.
In Psalm 63 he says, "Oh God, thou art my God." But it didn't stop there. He said, "Early will I seek thee my soul thirsts for thee, my flesh longs for thee in a dry and thirsty land where no water is." You see. Now what he's saying, you see, is that the hunger and the thirst never diminishes. In a true son of the kingdom, it's a way of life. Look at the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul in Philippians Chapter 3. Why you say Paul, you've known all there is to know. I mean, you in your lifetime had personal visions of Jesus Christ beginning on the Damascus Road. And then when you were in jail in Jerusalem. And then my goodness Paul called up into the third heaven to see things too wonderful to behold. Oh Paul what else can be said? Paul you who write all the theology, you who have penned the great expressions of divine truth in the New Testament, what more could you want. And the cry of his heart in Philippians 3:10 is "Oh that I may know Him." You see? "And the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings," it's never enough, it's never enough.
Sure he knew the law, he says in verse 6. "I knew the righteousness of the law, but I counted that as refuse, dung, I just w
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