Here are some questions based on last Sunday’s sermon text (Matthew 5:6), in case they’re helpful to you for personal growth or group discussion…

• Can you remember a time when you were really hungry for food? Really thirsty for water? People who are hungry and thirsty are enduring an experience of suffering because they lack what they desperately need to live. People who are hungry and thirsty can’t think of anything but satisfying their needs. Hunger and thirst don’t just go away after a while—they increase until you die from starvation or dehydration. Can you remember a time when you were “hungry” or “thirsty” for God? What is this experience like?

• In the Bible, “righteousness” is best defined as “the state of being in a right relationship with God.” As sinners, righteousness is something we lack in-and-of ourselves. We need righteousness, we need to be in a right relationship with God, or we will die. There is only one righteousness that will truly satisfy us—we need God’s own righteousness, God’s own right relationship with God. Jesus is God in the flesh, which means he lives in God’s relationship with God as a human, for us, in order to share this relationship with us by faith. Do you believe that Jesus enjoys God’s own relationship with God? What does this relationship look like in Jesus’ life? Do you believe that Jesus shares his righteousness with sinners? With you? Does his righteousness satisfy your hunger and thirst for righteousness?

• Jesus is the Righteous One, and has no lack of righteousness in himself. But he hungered and thirsted for righteousness—he desperately wanted a right relationship with God to define the lives and relationships and reality of everyone. Do you have a strong desire for other people to be satisfied with the righteousness of Christ, for right relationship with God to define their lives through faith in Jesus? Do you struggle with a false version of this hunger, the desire of self-righteousness? Are you tempted to condemn yourself or others for failing to “be righteous enough”? Can you remember any time when the Righteous One, Jesus, condemned the unrighteous?

• FOR THE CHILDREN: What do you think it means to be a Christian? Is it something like “being a good person”? Or is it something like “having a relationship with God”? Can you have a good relationship with God even if you sin? How or why is that possible? Why would you want to have a relationship with God?