The End of Hunger and Thirst

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.

Pray with Us

As you listen to God’s Word and uplifting Christian music on your local Moody Radio station, pray for the staff of your station as well as these additional members of Moody Radio’s Administration: Rhonda Carlson, Tinakka Johnson, and Lucrezia Lopez.

BY Dr. John Koessler

John Koessler is Professor Emeritus of Applied Theology and Church Ministries at Moody Bible Institute. John authors the “Practical Theology” column for Today in the Word of which he is also a contributing writer and theological editor. An award-winning author, John’s newest title is When God is Silent: Let the Bible Teach You to Pray (Kirkdale). Prior to joining the Moody faculty, he served as a pastor of Valley Chapel in Green Valley, Illinois, for nine years. He and his wife, Jane, now enjoy living in a lakeside town in Michigan.