Matthew 5:9
Let’s give our attention to God’s
holy word in Matthew chapter five, and we’ll pick up at verse
one. Speaking of the Lord Jesus, it
says, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when
he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth,
he taught them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Blessed
are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Blessed are the
peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are
those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile
you and they persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against
you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your
reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets
who were before you. Amen. This is God’s holy and
inspired word. Also tonight, we want to think
about a couple other passages in scripture related to peace. Blessed are the peacemakers.
Matthew chapter five verse nine tells us. If you flip in your
Bibles to Ephesians chapter four, verse three, Ephesians chapter
four, verse three, we read these words about, we ought to be eager
to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. And then in chapter 14 of Romans,
you probably recall this, it comes to mind, Romans chapter
14, when the apostle Paul is giving some concluding remarks,
he says in chapter 14, verse nine, or 19, if I can find it here.
So then let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding. And then if you go over to chapter
12 of Romans, he says in verse 16, live in
harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate
with the lowly. Never be conceited, repay no
one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the
sight of all, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live
peaceably with all. And then over in the book of
James, and after Hebrews, we have the half-brother of the
Lord Jesus. And in chapter three of James,
beginning in verse 17, he says these words, But the wisdom from above is
first pure, then it is peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full
of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere, and a harvest of
righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. So with those in mind, let’s
ask this question tonight. Are you a peacemaker or are you
a troublemaker? I mean, it’s only one or the
other, right? Are you a peacemaker? Or are
you a troublemaker? Pick apart that word for just
a moment. Peace and maker. What is peace? It’s the word
shalom we get in the Old Testament. Shalom is a word that doesn’t
just mean absence of strife. It means wholeness. It’s a word,
almost a word picture. Absence from strife just means
things are quiet. But shalom means things are going
well. There’s peace in relationships. There’s prosperity. There’s food
in the cupboard. There’s no war around. The Indians aren’t restless. Your next door neighbor’s animals
are not getting into your crops. There’s shalom, there’s peace.
But what about peacemaking? The making part, somebody’s the
source, somebody is a facilitator, gives a picture of some kind
of active work. So put the two together, peacemaker,
someone who labors in bringing shalom or well-being into a situation. So how does that work? Are you
a peacemaker? Are you a troublemaker? Well,
if you want to be a peacemaker, a couple of thoughts, a couple
of thoughts we got to consider. Now, this morning, if you were
with us for the morning service, you heard from Philippians chapter
four, verses two through four, where the apostle Paul says to
Euodia and Syntyche, their mamas didn’t like them much, as Andy
Griffith would say, But the Apostle Paul issues a charge to those
two, and then he issues a charge to some unnamed person, his true
companion, but he says to those two, agree in the Lord, have
the same mind. He’s told the whole church in
chapter two, verse two, have the same mind of Christ Jesus.
And what was his mindset? He left heaven, he came to earth,
and he loved and served his people. And so he’s telling Euodia and
Syntyche to agree in the Lord, have the same mind of Christ,
have the same mind in the Lord. Then he tells whoever his true
companion is, help these two, literally grab them both by the
arm and pull them together and tell them it’s gonna work out. And so are you a peacemaker?
Well, a couple of practical things to help us with that. First thing,
You gotta get to the bottom of it. If there’s a problem, you
gotta get to the source of the problem. Have you ever noticed
or been around somebody who works with their hands? They got busted
knuckles. If they are mechanical, there’s
black in the creases of their fingerprints. It’s in the form
and the depths of their fingers that’s under their nails. You
can look at their hands and say, this person works on something.
You can tell somebody who works on engines, they’re greasy. You
can tell somebody who works with wood, their hands are calloused
and tough. You can tell somebody who does
something with their hands because they’re wounded. They are scarred
from being at work. And so a person who has a machine
that won’t work, what do they do? They tear it apart until
they find out what’s wrong with it. You know, they don’t just
spray it with some WD-40 and shine up all the parts and hose
it off and make it look nice and shiny. Nice and shiny does
not fix the root of the problem. What do they do? They figure
out if it’s a fuel problem. They figure out if it’s an ignition
problem. They figure out if it’s a spark plug or a bad wire or
a clogged carburetor. It could be all kinds of things,
but they tear it apart until they fix it. But they have to
get to the bottom of it. Now, if you take your lawnmower
to the local fix-it guy and it won’t start, And he opens up
your carburetor and hoses in there, some of that quick start
stuff and cranks it up and says, look there, it’s running great. She’s running great. Well, she’s
running great as long as you have that magic can of highly flammable
spray. But it’d be better, wouldn’t
it, if he tore it apart and he got to the bottom of it and fixed
it. And so first thing in peacemaking, we gotta get to the bottom of
it. And the problem is we have to dig into hearts. We have to
dig into people’s issues, and that can make you a troublemaker. It can make a peacemaker appear
to be a troublemaker. So the question, are you a peacemaker?
Hopefully so. Are you a troublemaker? Probably
to some, that’s the way you’ll be seen, but we have to get to
the bottom of issues in order to make them go away biblically. What does that mean? It means
we look, we listen, we ask, we probe. Sometimes we have a little
crack in the wall of our house and we get some of that magic
plaster from Lowe’s and we cover it over and we paint it and we
think, boy, we’ve done it just right. We plastered, we sanded,
we painted, we fixed. And the next change of the season,
the foundation shifts and guess what? The crack’s back and it’s
a wide gaping wound in your house and it’s staring at you, laughing
at you for not having resolved the problem. So we can plaster
over problems. What do we do now in American
culture? We pop a pill. We get some surgery
if our wrinkles are coming out. We dye our hair if it’s looking
a little gray. Or if you’re in my shoes, you get a toupee or something. But we like to cover up our problems.
Well, what’s the root of it? Got to get to the bottom of it.
We got to get to the bottom of it, and that involves truth.
And sometimes, what do we say? Truth is ugly. It’s not pretty, it’s messy.
So peacemaking means we get to the bottom of the issue. The
second thing we have to think about with peacemaking is after
we’ve gotten to the bottom of the issue, then we have to be
willing to deal with it. And that is risky business, let
me just tell you. What happens when we confront
a problem? Our hair gets blown back and the scorched fire comes
and it singes you and your eyebrows are gone. Your hair is half missing. You have opened wounds. You have
stirred up trouble. You are going to be misunderstood. If you end up confronting or
rebuking, it becomes difficulty. Think just about parenting for
a moment. Why is it most children who are raised in a home now
Can’t make it, can’t stand on two feet. I was watching the
Cosby show yesterday, and he was, the kids were, it was on,
I was doing something, but it was on in the background, and
this guy comes in and talks about how he’s gonna run the show of the
house, and Bill Cosby, of course, in his humor was saying, no,
you won’t run the house, it will run you. And he said, the guy
was talking about marriage and this, that, and the other, and
Cosby made some kind of interesting statement. He said, my wife and
I have grown closer to each other with kids. He said, because we’re
scared of the kids and all we have is each other. But he said
something that’s really true. Parents are scared of their children.
But we’re scared in all relationships of disrupting peace. We don’t
want the plaster to come off. We’d rather just take that can
of starter spray and spray it into the carburetor, pull the
cord and send that lawnmower or that machine on its merry
way. But we have to get to the bottom of things. We have to
deal with things. and it can be quite difficult. Third thing, after we get to
the bottom of it, after we deal with the issue, we have to persevere
in it. What’s the biggest failure for
people who are confronted with, say, an addiction, or they are
confronted with a habitual sin, or they are confronted with something
that they continually do in their life that wreaks havoc? Well,
they like to say, well, it’s all taken care of now. And they
want to rationalize. Well, I do this because of X.
I do this because of Y. I do this because of Z. And it’s
very easy for those who are at work in peacemaking to have one
pulled over on them, to let people rationalize. Nobody wants to
deal with the hardships of life. Nobody wants to deal with or
face their own sin. There’s a fourth thing to consider. We gotta be positive. And what
do I mean by positive? You can do it. No, Jesus can
do it. That is the center of the reality
of peacemaking. Yes, we have to get to the bottom
of things. Yes, we have to deal with issues. Yes, we have to
persevere, but we have to be positive and that means gospel
positive. Jesus can fix anything. The gospel can fix anything. Reconciliation, peace is possible
when Jesus is at the center. And so we have to be positive,
we have to be optimistic. I remember some years ago at
a Presbyterian meeting, and Tim may remember this, and maybe
if some of you ruling elders were there at the time, there was
a big rift between a pastor and his church. I can’t recall the
details. And so the problem got listed. Big problem, big problem. Pastor, people, pastor, people,
big problem. And as we listened to The issue, everybody’s like,
oh, this is a tough one. And somebody finally stood up
in the middle of the room and said, do we still believe the
gospel? You remember that? It may have been around the progressive
situation down east. I think that may be the case
as I talk through it. But somebody kind of stood up
and said, don’t we still believe in the gospel around here? And
that’s how we have to think. Things can be messy. The lawyers
may be on the speed dial. The legal bills may be mounting
up. The hatred and animosity could have accumulated between
people, but we got to remain positive because the gospel makes
all things possible. The fifth thing to think about,
we’ve got to rely on God. This is something, in addition
to the gospel, that I think we have to have on the forefronts
of our minds if you’re going to enter into a messy situation.
And we’re talking here amongst Christians. Peacemaking can happen
outside the church as well, but we’re thinking here in the company
of saints. If you’re gonna miss in the hearts
of people, you need the Holy Spirit. They need the Holy Spirit. We need grace. They need grace. It needs to be bathed in prayer
and in wisdom. This is not something we go into
lightly or recklessly, but we have to fully rely on God Almighty. One of the things that we forget,
but it’s very true, we’re good Calvinist, it is God who grants
repentance. You can beg, you can cajole,
you can threaten, you can suspend from the Lord’s table, You can
suspend from office. You can bar from membership in
the church. You can do all the human things
that God gives us to do. But only God can grant repentance.
Only God can soften hearts. Only God can make a person come
to their senses and get on their knees and say, I have sinned.
I have erred. I have fallen short. I have grieved
the Holy Spirit, I have hurt others, and I am sorry for what
I’ve done and want to make amends. In reading through Ken Sandy’s
The Peacemaker book, I mentioned it to y’all this morning, we’ve
passed it around the session room, we have referred to it
very often in every place I’ve served in ministry. Ken Sandy
is an attorney who realized that in the legal process, you can
litigate, you can negotiate, you can arbitrate, you can do
all kinds of legal things. But he said, at the end of the
day, do you want people to agree to disagree? At the end of the
day, do you want the law to force people into a situation? Or do
you really want the parties to get together? And that’s the
goal of reconciliation. That’s the goal of peace. It’s
to have people who are at odds with one another together in
the same room. And sometimes it means we resort
to legal things. The Bible seems to say in Corinthians
that Christians ought to be able to handle things together. We
don’t need pagan courts to determine things for us, but sometimes
in the church and even in the world, we need to seek some professional
help. But at the end of the day, we
want to not just win, we want to win a brother. We want to
win a relationship back. And so in his peacemakers ministry,
as you read through, their resources, you find a man whose heart is
that people not just get what they desire out of a situation,
but that they actually come back to the table. And at the opening
of his book, he describes a situation where a man who was a businessman
had another man, a businessman, build a house for him. The man
who had the house built was rather particular about things. And
so when the house was completed, He says to the man who built
it, I don’t like some things. The man who built it says you
should like it, I did a good job. And so they go back and
forth, hiring lawyers, litigating, arbitrating, negotiating, mediating,
nearly killing each other, both Christians. And so Peacemaker’s
ministry was called in to help. And they got to the bottom of
it, the truth of the matter. Brother, you’re hard-hearted,
you’re a little too picky. Brother, you did some sloppy
things, you need to fix them. They dealt with it. Fix what
you didn’t do, get over your over pickiness. They persevered
in it. Those men flung words at each
other. They were hard towards each other. They litigated, they negotiated,
they lawyered up, they spent thousands upon thousands of dollars
just to prove who was right. But there was perseverance on
behalf of the two men through their peacemaker folks. Those
who were in the situation to make peace were positive. They
spoke of the gospel and Jesus’ ability to help them. They relied
on God. There was prayer. There was the Holy Spirit. And
you know how that situation ended? The one man said, I’m too picky
and it’s nearly ruined my marriage. And my wife says, I’m too picky
and I’ve been too hard on you. And the builder says, I was sloppy.
I need to fix some things and I’m going to fix them. It’s not
going to cost you anything. One of the mediators, who was a businessman,
donated the materials needed to fix some of the things in
the home. The builder went to the man’s
wife and said, I have torn your house up, not your physical house,
and we’ll fix a few things, but I’ve torn your home up, and I’ve
embittered your husband. And there was repentance all
around. And so one of the men went back to his lawyer the next
day. Lawyer was probably not a Christian.
The lawyer says, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.
What a gospel witness. that Jesus, through the power
of his Holy Spirit, when faithful Christians get to the bottom
of the issues, they deal with the issues faithfully, they get
into our hearts and into the midst of our sin and our brokenness. They rely on God, they stay positive,
they keep the gospel at the center, and it makes fellowship possible.
You know, Satan has it easy on destroying the church. He doesn’t
even have to send any of his own people in. He can use them
to do other stuff. He just uses the church. And
he uses us unwillingly, unwittingly very often to get a foothold
and to tear apart the fellowship. Think about a couple Psalms,
maybe some that we’ve gotten into in previous studies, but
some we’re gonna get into in the 50s. You know what King David
says? I think it’s in Psalm 55. I got people who hate me. They’re after me, they are trying
to destroy my life. And then he says this, he says,
I could bear it if it were outsiders. But what does he say? It’s somebody
I walked to temple with. It’s somebody I went to the house
of the Lord with. If it was not a friend, if it was an enemy,
I could bear it. But no, this is someone I’ve had sweet fellowship
with. And that’s often the way it is.
It’s very often the way it is. I remember, This has been about
five years ago being in a situation where about 10 of us didn’t agree. There were eight of us who were
together. There were two of us that were not. We spent thousands
of dollars on mediation. We spent countless hours around
the table. We spent countless hours speaking and talking while
two men stared back at us and said nothing. while the clock
was ticking, while the dollar meter was rolling by. And it
was very obvious that there was a group willing to reconcile,
but there was a group very obviously not. And it brought a lot of
pain to a lot of people over a very protracted period of time. And at the end, when a group
of us decided to walk away, you know what the other said? We
have prevailed. And it brought a lot of destruction.
It caused shame to the name of Christ. But Satan gets a foothold
like that and he loves when there’s disunity in the church. Psalm
133 is a Psalm we like in the ARP. Behold how good it is and
how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity. It’s refreshing, it’s joyful. It’s a wonderful thing, but oh,
how painful it is when brothers do not dwell together in unity.
So we have a twofold call today as a church. One from Philippians
chapter four and then from Matthew’s gospel, the Beatitudes, to agree,
to be like-minded in the Lord, to be peacemakers, to help others
and pull them together if at all possible. And there’s a promise,
there’s a promise to this Beatitude. Blessed are the peacemakers for
they shall be called the sons of God. Let me tell you this,
only sons of God can be peacemakers. the world will be at war with
each other, the world will be at odds with one another, but
it’s only we who have experienced the peace of the cross. I think
about Colossians chapter one, in verse 19 and 20, it says,
for in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether
on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross. And then in Ephesians chapter
two, verses 13 through 17. Let’s respond. ♪ I am ever glorious
♪ ♪ Is God’s perfect peace ♪ ♪ Over all victorious ♪ ♪ In its bright
and free ♪ We may trust Him fully, all for
us to see. Amen. Go in peace.