Blessed Are The Peacemakers
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Good
morning church. I would like
to thank the choir for that beautiful rendition and helping us to begin
thinking a little bit about peace – how we are God’s agents of peace. Before I
begin I would like to thank the pastors for the opportunity to preach the Word
today. It is a great responsibility for any preacher of the Word to speak
truth, because the Word tells us that teachers of the Word will be judged more
strictly. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any 2 edged sword,
piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, and discerning the thoughts and
intentions of the heart. Let us open this time with a word of prayer.
Dear Lord,
we pray for Your wisdom to understand Your Word, and may the Holy Spirit
illuminate our minds to grasp the truths of the Word, and quicken our hearts to
live out the truths we learn today, that we may be doers of the Word and not
hearers only. We commit this time into Your hands and pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
As we
continue on this sermon series on the beatitudes, today my sermon will cover
the beatitude that Jesus talks about in verse 9. I shall read it aloud for us. In
Matthew 5:9, Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called
sons of God”. My sermon today is going to cover 5 points. I will first be
discussing the word ‘peace’ and what we understand ‘peace’ to mean in our
culture today, and what the Bible says about peace. Points 2 and 3 will deal
with the verse itself and what we need to understand before doing the work of
peacemaking. The 4th point will be some practical application tips
and the last point will be what peacemaking is not, and finally, I will conclude.
What is
peace? The famous Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, wrote a book titled “War and
Peace”, which ranks 3rd in Time Magazine’s 10 greatest books of all time. For
those of you who might be interested, this huge tome, going at over a thousand
pages long, chronicles the history of the French invasion of Russia through the
lenses of 5 Russian aristocratic families. Clearly, Mr Tolstoy’s intention in
the titling of his novel, intends for us to see peace as a binary opposite to
war. Peace, according to the dictionary, is firstly defined as freedom from
disturbance, or, tranquility. It also defines a period of the absence of war.
The word
peace in our passage today, is translated from the Greek “Eirene”, which has
meanings close to what we understand in our English dictionary today. Some of
these meanings include a state of tranquility, the absence of war as mentioned,
but also peace between individuals – harmony and concord, if you will, or a
right relationship. At this point we begin to come a little bit closer to what
Jesus is saying in this particular Beatitude.
If peace
suggests harmony and concord between individuals, then surely by peacemaking
Jesus must be telling his disciples that they are to be people that resolve
conflict and be arbiters of disputes. I guess if if we take that definition,
the disciples would most likely need to pursue a course in diplomacy or
negotiation so that they can specialize in dispute resolution. However, I do
not think this is the point that Jesus was trying to make.
Let’s take
a few steps back and examine the word ‘peace’ a little more closely in the
Bible. The word for ‘peace’ in the OT, in Hebrew is actually the word ‘Shalom’,
and this word also heavily influences the use of the NT’s ‘eirene’. Some may
know that ‘shalom’ is a greeting that may be used amongst Jews. This noun is
interesting because it contains many nuances to its meaning, a lot of which
overlap with ‘eirene’. A search on Strong’s Hebrew concordance yields the word ‘Shalom’
to mean: completeness; soundness; welfare; peace. But today I would like to
draw your attention to how the word ‘shalom’ means ‘completeness’, or ‘wholeness’.
How do we make sense then of the ideas of ‘peace’ and
‘wholeness’/‘completeness’?
We need at
this point to go back to Eden, where Adam and Eve lived in the garden with no
fear and no shame, in perfect covenant relationship with God. However, because
of the Fall and the introduction of sin into the world, the picture of the
perfect covenant relationship with God is broken. Because of Adam, sin entered
the world, death came to all mankind, death reigned over man and creation, and
all men were sinners, condemned to death, away from God (Romans 5). This brokenness
is to pervade the world. In the book of Romans, Paul tell us that all of us,
not just Adam, we are enemies of God – we are in conflict with him (Romans
5:10). We choose to do our own will instead of obeying His. But if we confess
and repent of our sins, and receive Christ to be Lord and Saviour of our lives,
Jesus restores us to a right relationship with the Father, and we are no longer
in conflict with God. In John 14:6 we learn that Jesus is the way, the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. This means that in
Christ Jesus we can make peace with the Father. This broken covenant
relationship can only be restored through Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation. Jesus,
who is our Prince of peace (as Isaiah says in Isaiah 9:6), has made us whole,
and has reconciled us with God the Father. Therefore, in order to be
peacemakers we must first recognize that Christ
is our peacemaker, because He made peace between us and God. Because of
Christ, the broken relationship with God that began with Adam is restored. We
are reconciled to God. Sin is removed, and we are clothed in his righteousness,
that we may be acceptable before God. This is my first point – Christ is our
ultimate peacemaker, as He alone reconciles man to God, and He models
peacemaking for us. Therefore the notion of peace is synonymous with the idea
of wholeness and completeness through the work of reconciliation or restoration
of relationship – there is peace when relationships are restored from
brokenness to wholeness and harmony.
Next, I
want to unpack for us what ‘sons of God’ mean. Why does Jesus say peacemakers
will be blessed because they will be called sons of God? What does it mean to
be a son of God?
Fairfield
is a family church, and many of the families that worship here know each other.
However, we may still be considered a moderate-sized church by many accounts,
and up till today I am still learning new family connections between different
church members. I remember when I was younger, whenever someone needed to
identify who I was, I was always asked – who is your father/mother? And in the
same way, at my age now when I need to identify people who may be younger than
I am, I would also ask who his or her parents are. Then comes the realization –
ah, you are so and so’s son. Identification is based on one’s relationships.
When babies are born, people would also like to say – oh she has her mother’s
eyes or her father’s chin etc etc. I’m sure the parents in this congregation
have had such comments given them when their children were born. In the same
way that children are identified based on their likeness or link to their
parents, so also we are identified as “sons of God” based on our likeness to
our Father God. What Jesus is saying in Matthew 5:9 is that people who are called sons of God have the
character of their heavenly Father. To
be a son of God is to reflect God’s character. We know from the Bible that
our God is a God of peace (Romans 16:20; 1 Thess. 5:23; Hebrews 13:20). God is
a peace-loving and a peace-making God, because He sent His Son to make peace
between us and Him. John Piper has this to say: “The whole history of
redemption, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, is God’s strategy
to bring about a just and lasting peace between rebel man and himself, and then
between man and man. Therefore, God’s children are that way, too. They have the
character of their Father. What he loves, they love; what he pursues, they
pursue. You can know his children by whether they are willing to make
sacrifices for peace the way God did.” Let me repeat this last sentence. “You
can know his children by whether they are willing to make sacrifices for peace
the way God did.”
Wow. What
Piper is saying is that, when we partake in the same kind of peacemaking that
Jesus did to reconcile us and the Father, and demonstrate the desire for peace,
we are clearly reflecting the heart of our peace-making and peace-loving God.
There are 2 observations that I would like to make here.
Point 1) When we participate in radical peace-making
we are witnesses of our identity as God’s children to the world. We reveal
the peace-making heart of God to the people around us when we refuse to
participate in conflict and work towards the restoration of relationships, in
the same vein that Christ restored our relationship to the Father. Radical
peace-making is not simply the avoidance of conflict (something which I will
pick up on later), but it is the active pursuit of restoring relationships that
may be broken. When we do this we become “sons of God” by witnessing to the
world about God’s peace-loving and peace-making character. People will then see
God’s character in us, and we will reflect His identity.
Point 2) is
that, to be called a son of God is a
blessing, because it shows that we are closely aligned with the character of
our Father. In Romans 8:29 Paul tells us that we are predestined to be
conformed to the image of Jesus – this is our purpose. The more we practice
peacemaking, the more we reflect the character of the Father. The more we
reflect the character of the Father, the more we are growing into the likeness
of Christ, which is our end goal – to be like Christ. Can you name me the fruit
of the Spirit? In Galatians 5 Paul reminds the church about these 9 attributes
that are the fruit of the Spirit working in our lives, and one of the
attributes is peace. If we are led by the Holy Spirit, we will bear the fruit
of peace. This peace is not just a “feeling” of peace, but also a desire for
peacemaking.
Now then, what
is the nature of this peace-making all about? How do we go about this business
of peace-making?
Remember
that peace making is neither merely tranquility or the absence of war or
conflict. Peace-making is about pursuing
the restoration of relationships.
A little further
along Matthew, in Matthew 5:43-45, we gain some insight into how we can
practice peace-making, and looking at this passage in parallel with this beatitude,
we can see that these verses have in common the idea of becoming sons of the
Father. In this passage Jesus calls his disciples to love their enemies and
pray for those who persecute them. Here we can get a picture of what
peace-making entails, and that is that peacemaking
is demonstrated through acts of love that overcome the enmity between ourselves
and others. This is a pretty radical call because our natural tendency to
people who are annoying or simply unlovable is at best to shun them or at worse
to engage in some kind of conflict with them. Yet we are commanded to love our
enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If we are to obey Christ we have
to fight against our natural desires and to respond in a way that will surprise,
shock, or even humble our antagonists. Jesus, in his obedience to the Father
chose the road of suffering; to drink the cup of wrath that he may do His
Father’s will and glorify His Father. The call for us is to walk in Christ’s
footsteps in this peace-making pattern – we need to forsake our immediate
tendency to engage in conflict in order to obey Christ, and instead, to
‘suffer’ by doing the very opposite thing, which is to show them love.
There is a
specific way in Matthew 5 that we can practice in order to make peace. The
first is to pray for others, especially our enemies. Praying for people whom we
may be in conflict with can be a first step towards reconciliation, to
recognize that the God of peace has the power to bring peace into our
relationships.
However,
there is one word of caution about what peace-making is not. The caveat is that
peace-making may not be always the same as peace-achieving – in other words,
the desire and pursuit of peacemaking through acts of love may not always
result in peace. This is because achieving peace requires the effort of both
parties in a broken relationship. This means that there may be somebody at your
workplace or in school that may not be on cordial or even speaking terms with
you, perhaps because of some misunderstandings that may have caused this rift
or someone misinterpreting your intended actions. This person may then, because
of all these reasons, treat you horribly. I’m sure that for many here in this
congregation, even now, the image of someone may spring to mind. Brothers and
sisters in Christ, the call of God to you today to peacemaking is to fight our
desires for animosity. It is to fight our desires to defend our pride and show
that the other person is wrong. It is to fight the desire to fight back, and
answer the call to show love. To do all this in spite of the other party’s
reaction. When we do this, whether or not we achieve peace, we would have
demonstrated the character of God and His peace-loving, peace-making heart. We
would become sons (and daughters) of God.
Lastly,
peace-making should neither be at the expense of truth, nor at the expense of
obedience to Christ. Let’s go to Matthew 10:34-36. Why on earth would Jesus say
that “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”? So confusing right? Huh, is
Jesus contradicting himself here? Not quite. Not when we understand the full
context and implications of what Jesus means.
Before His
crucifixion and ascension, Jesus warned his disciples in John 15:18 that “if
the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you”. In the
context of Matthew 10, Jesus again was warning his disciples before sending
them out into the world. What was he warning them about? He was warning them
about persecution from the world that arises from the gospel message that they
are sending out. The reference to the sword that Jesus brings does not
contradict the peace that He establishes between us and the Father through His
sacrifice. Instead, it must be understood in light of the context of
persecution, where Jesus is warning His disciples that if they stand for the
truth of the gospel and the message of salvation, there is going to be
rejection against this truth. And this rejection may lead to conflict, and in
the context of the passage, a conflict within family members.
What is the
message here? If we confess Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, our obedience
and allegiance to Him stands above all other relationships. This is the cost of
our discipleship, and reminds us that peace-achieving is not our ultimate
mission. Therefore, peace-making may not always result in peace-achieving,
especially not so if there is a rejection of truth and the consequent
persecution for the believer.
In
conclusion:
I began the
sermon by discussing the word ‘peace’, and highlighted the definition of peace
as the restoration of relationship in
connection with the idea of wholeness/completeness. The first point that
was made was that in order to understand the business of peace-making we must
first recognize that Christ is the
ultimate peace-maker, and that he has modelled radical peace-making and
reconciliation for us by restoring us to a right relationship with our Father
God. This he accomplished through his radical sacrifice – something we
might want to spend more time meditating on in this season of Lent. Then I
spoke about what ‘sons of God’ meant, which contained 2 points. The first was
that we become witnesses of God’s
character to the world around us when we pursue peace, and the second is
that peacemaking is a blessing because
we show that we reflect God’s character. Next, I touched on what
peace-making looks like practically, that peace-making is to show love instead of enmity, and to practice that through praying for the people who we might not be
at peace with, and pursuing peace despite how people might respond. Lastly,
we need to remember that the desire for
peace may not always yield the result of achieving peace, and especially not so
if it may compromise truth or our obedience to Christ.
May we ever
learn to love as Christ loved in our pursuit of peace, that we may truly be
blessed by being called sons of God. Shall we pray?
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