1-29-19 Today in the Word

Hunger, Thirst, and Righteousness
THE END OF HUNGER AND THIRST
Tuesday, January 29, 2019 | Revelation 7:13–17

In 2015 the United Nations set a goal to end world hunger by the year 2030. As we enter 2019, it doesn’t seem likely that this goal will be achieved. According to the hunger relief organization Oxfam, the world produces 17 percent more food per person than it did 30 years ago, yet nearly one billion people still suffer from hunger. How to explain this? It is not a failure of technology or the Earth’s potential to sustain its inhabitants. The root problem is sin.
Many of the contributing factors that lead to world hunger are the result of human behavior. War, poverty, and injustice all flow from the entrance of sin into the human experience, and hunger is part of the suffering they unleash. In addition, natural factors can create an environment in which hunger flourishes. Drought, floods, and tropical storms can all create food shortages. These too are part of the collateral damage of sin. Sin altered the created order so that the ground was cursed and its food was produced only with difficulty (see Gen. 3:17–19).
The solution to the problem of world hunger will not come by human or natural means. In today’s passage we are granted a glimpse of the future. The great multitude who “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” will be delivered out of great tribulation and will be shielded from hunger and thirst (vv. 15–17). The language of this description echoes the promise of Isaiah 49:10: “They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.” God will finally for all eternity abolish hunger and satisfy His people.
APPLY THE WORD
This snapshot of the bliss of heaven is intended to provide hope and encouragement to those who suffer here and now. The church has an obligation to be part of God’s work to “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10). A better world is yet to come. God will remove the curse and unite heaven and earth. Until then, we act as His agents in a broken world.

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