By Rev. Mark Creech
RevMarkCreech.org
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” — Matthew 5:6 (KJV)
Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount cut across every generation. Righteousness is everything right in its truest sense – right in belief and behavior, in the heart and in the public square. It begins with getting right with God through Jesus Christ, but cannot end there; it must compel us to stand for what is right against what is wrong, personally and collectively.
Commentator William Barclay once wrote that few modern people know what hunger and thirst mean. For most of us, food and drink are never far away. But in Jesus’ day, hunger and thirst were agonizing realities. The peasant worker in Palestine often labored on the edge of starvation. The traveler across the arid wilderness faced a thirst that could kill. Barclay described it as the hunger of a man starving for food, the thirst of a man who will die unless he drinks.
Christ asks, Do you desire righteousness like that? Do you long for God’s goodness to prevail as desperately as a starving man longs for bread or a dying man for water? That is the intensity with which we are called to seek and uphold righteousness — not a polite preference for virtue, but a consuming passion to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
Years ago, my son, Matthew, served as a crewman aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, a magnificent tall ship used to train cadets. On one occasion, I had the privilege of sailing with him as a guest on board the vessel from Wilmington to Norfolk. At one point early on the trip, the crew conducted a lifeboat drill. Guests were shown where to gather and how to put on their survival suits, a mere exercise on calm seas.
But had that same drill occurred amid high winds and heaving waves, I’m certain every passenger would have paid far closer attention. The greater the danger, the more seriously we take the means of survival.
No one astute about current events can deny that the cultural waves have been heaving in America for quite some time. The sky has been dark with tempests of moral confusion, hostility toward the Christian faith, and rank political corruption. Once honored as the sturdy lifeboats of civilization, the principles of God’s Word are now dismissed as relics of another age. Yet those principles remain the only sure means of keeping a people afloat amid the chaos.
Christians in America have been blessed with the same rights as any other citizens—to speak, vote, organize, and advocate. But freedom unused is ultimately freedom lost. “Righteousness” must therefore be understood in its larger meaning—not only as personal holiness but as cultural conformity to God’s order. For serious followers of Christ, it means contending responsibly for godly standards wherever they are under assault: in education, law, media, or government.
Some object that faith and politics should never mix. But nearly every law results from someone’s moral vision – someone’s judgment about right and wrong. The only question is whose values will prevail. To say Christians should abstain from influencing public policy is to surrender the moral helm of the nation to those who reject God altogether.
We no longer have the luxury of ignoring the storm. The waves of secularism have been pounding against the hull of our institutions. Families are disoriented, children are catechized by godless ideologies, and truth itself is scorned as hate speech. It’s long past the time for believers to take their stations. The good news is that many are. That’s why, even now, for the first time, we are beginning to see the pendulum swing back, as God awakens His people to reenter the public square with conviction and courage.
In fact, there are growing signs that the Spirit of God is stirring hearts across the nation. A recent Fox News report highlighted what it called a “Christian Revival Across the U.S.” According to industry data, annual Bible sales have risen 41.6% since 2022, downloads of religion and spirituality apps have surged 79.5% since 2019, and streams of contemporary Christian music on Spotify are up 50%. These are not mere statistics but signals of a spiritual hunger reawakening among Americans, especially the young.
Yet hungering and thirsting for righteousness must mean more than increased Bible sales, app downloads, or Christian music streams. These are encouraging signs of revival, but revival must lead to reformation on the individual and corporate levels. Lives truly transformed by the Gospel must transform the culture: speaking the truth with love, standing with courage, and linking arms with those who defend biblical values in the public square.
The storm is no longer on the horizon – it is here. It has been here. The question is whether the people of God will man the lifeboats and steer this generation toward righteousness before the tide carries us farther from shore.
“Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” That promise still stands, but it is fulfilled only in those who take their post when the storm rages and set their hands to the ropes.
This article was developed from a sermon by Rev. Creech, titled: Hungering and Thirsting for Cultural Righteousness
