The Ingredients of Happiness
Part 7: Matt 5:9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God’.
Pastor Charles Price
I am going to read to you one verse from Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 5 verse 9. This is one of the beatitudes, as we call them, the statements that mark the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, which was the most concentrated statement that Jesus ever made publicly when he addressed a crowd there on the mountainside. And in Verse 9 He said this:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Those of you who have been with us in recent weeks will know that we have been looking at these statements, these beatitudes of Jesus. They are not random statements. The word “blessed” literally means to be happy. That’s the meaning of the word that lies behind this, the word “markariŏs”. And there is a progression beginning with the first and building on through to the eighth and recognizing first our poverty of spirit (the first step to real happiness), mourning that poverty, meekly submitting ourselves to Christ. Out of that we discover a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. We become more concerned to give than to get. We’re merciful, we’re compassionate and we become pure in heart. I described that last time – the real word there meaning single-minded, was what I suggested to you – “this one thing I do”, knowing what life is about.
But I want to ask this question now: What kind of impact does this person have on the world? If we’re living in the light of these beatitudes, what kind of impact might we expect to have on the world? And the last two tell us. First of all, in Verse 9, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, said Jesus. And then in Verse 10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” Now these two may seem in conflict. On the one hand, peacemakers; on the other hand, the violence that is implied in persecution. It isn’t just here that these two ideas go together. Jesus said to His disciples in John 16:33 – He was very blunt with them – He said, “I have told you these things that in me you may have peace. But in this world you will have trouble.” Now He said, “in Me”. That is: “In My union with you, said Jesus, “in your internal life you will have peace, but in your external world you’re actually going to have trouble.”
And this internal, this external comes together in these two beatitudes. We’re going to look just at the first one this morning. We’re going to talk about what it means, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Now I have been living in Canada for several years now and we love this place, and I observe that peace is a very high value in the nation of Canada. The United Nation Peacekeeping Forces, which have served our world well, currently in about sixteen theatres of operation, was a Canadian initiative, as you probably know. In 1956 when the President of Egypt, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal (which had been owned privately by a French and a British Company), the French and the British tried to come in and re-take it because it was taking a strategic access from Europe to Asia as a trade access and threatening it. Israel took advantage of the instability and began to attack Egypt. And then it looked as though the Egyptians might bring the Russians in to assist them, and the Israelis may bring in the Americans. And it looked like this Suez Canal (which is actually no wider than the property in which we are today), was going to be the flashpoint for a world global showdown.
Now at the United Nations in New York, Lester Pearson who was then the Foreign Minister, proposed a force of peacekeeping soldiers from non-competitive countries, which would protect the canal while this issue was being resolved. And ever since then the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations of course have played a key role in our world. In fact 100,000 Canadians have served in them in 64 operations outside of Canada, Canada is well-known for this, for its soldiers wearing the blue helmets that say, “Don’t shoot me because I don’t have anything to shoot you back with; I’m a peacekeeper.”
Well that’s a good thing – very good thing. Because in actual fact, the Society of International Law in London have published research into 3600 years of recorded history and they state that there have been 14,351 documented wars, both large and small during that period in which 3.64 billion people have died, as a result of conflict. And by the way, most of those wars were in times when the only people who fought them were soldiers; civilians were not involved because it was almost hand-to-hand. That’s a huge amount of people that have died as a result of conflict. In the last three centuries alone, 286 wars have been waged on the continent of Europe alone, according to that same document.
Now actually this should be of no surprise to readers of the Bible. Jesus had said to His disciples, “In this world you will have trouble”(don’t be surprised by it). And yet the message of Jesus and the message of the New Testament is also a message of peace. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, angels appeared to shepherds, you remember, out on the hillside, and amongst their message was, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.” And yet within a very short time the very birth of Jesus had been the catalyst for incredible violence in Bethlehem when Herod authored the death of every baby boy under two years of age, in an attempt to destroy the Messiah. And I imagine that some of these shepherds were fathers of little baby boys and they had heard the message, “Peace on Earth” and seen the slaughter that had taken place so very soon afterwards.
To His disciples, Jesus said in John 14,
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
And then He qualified it:
“Not as the world gives, give I unto you.”
“I am talking about something different to what the world would understand by this statement.” Because Jesus also said to His disciples in Matthew 10:34,
“Do not suppose I’ve come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be members of his own household.”
Some of you know about that; that the coming of Christ into your life has created tension in your home - not peace - and in your relationships.
And of course there was the brutality of Jesus’ own life, as the recipient of such opposition and subsequently brutality. There was the brutality against the early church that is documented in the Book of Acts and also beyond that. Yet this beatitude says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” How do we understand this in the light of the awful realities of life and the realities of history?
Well let me talk about two things to help us to understand this. First of all, let me talk about what I’m calling the problem, simply the problem. Why is it that peace seems such an alien thing in our world? Then I’ll talk secondly about the peace. What is the peace that is spoken? Now I am aware of course this is about being a peacemaker, not blessed to those who are at peace. That’s one thing; that isn’t what this is about. Blessed are those who are the peacemakers”; that is something proactive, something dynamic, something influential and we’ll come to that in just a few moments.
But first of all let me talk about the problem. I remember some years ago I was in New Zealand and I was conducting a week of meetings in a city there. I was invited for two or three mornings to go to a local high school, which I was very glad to do, and I was speaking to a group of kids in the school one morning. And when I began I said, “I don’t know too much about you folks. I don’t know what you think, I don’t know what you feel about life, but I want to ask you a question.” I said, “You are not responsible for the world that you are growing up in. Your parents, your grandparents, previous generations have created the kind of world that you are living in right now. I want to ask you this question: Do you like the world that they are passing to you?”
And after various comments were made, the general consensus was “No, we don’t like the state of the world.”
So I said, “Alright, I want you to tell me what you think is wrong with the world. I have a piece of chalk here and we have got a chalk board and I’m going to write down on the chalk board the kind of things that you think are wrong with the world. And then we’ll talk about them.”
Well they began by saying silly things like teachers and parents and politicians and policemen and all that. So I said, “Let me just hold on a second before I write anything down. I am not going to write those words down but”, I said to them, “it’s interesting that all those you’ve named happened to be people. Nobody here says ‘cats are what’s wrong with the world’, you know, ‘mice are what’s wrong with the world’, ‘flies are what’s wrong with the world. It’s people. So let’s be a little smarter than this. Tell me what’s wrong with people. You tell me some things that are wrong with people and these are the things we will write down.” So, I’ve forgotten the order in which they came. Somebody put a hand up and I said, “Yes.”
He said, “People are greedy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there are people who just want to accumulate more and more and more and in the process other people get damaged and hurt.”
I said, “Well that’s a good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘greedy’ on the board.
Somebody said, “People are proud.”
I said, “What do you mean by that?”
“Well some people think they are better than other people and so they think they, you know, live slightly elite above them and they try to push them down. You know, a bit like Hitler wanting to cleanse Europe of Jews and that kind of thing, because the Arian race was more important.”
“Good one.” I wrote down that word ‘proud’.
Somebody else put their hand up and said, “People are selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re just concerned with me, me, me and you know, half the world goes to bed with fat stomachs; the other half goes to bed hungry. And the half that have got everything hardly seem to care about the half who’ve got nothing.”
“That’s a good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘greedy’.
Somebody said, “People are jealous.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there are some people who don’t have very much and they don’t like the fact that other people have more than they do so they want to spoil it for them and destroy it for them.”
“Okay, good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘jealousy’. They gave me some others but that’ll do. So I said, “Alright, so what we’ve written on this board here are what you say is wrong with the world. People are proud, people are greedy, people are jealous; people are selfish. Is that right?”
And they said, “Yes.”
I said, “Just suppose tonight instead of going home at the end of the day, you got the whole school together into the gymnasium or whatever building you’ve got and you closed the doors and you get up and you say, ‘Hey listen school, our world is in a mess. People are proud, people are selfish, people are greedy, people are jealous.’ And supposing you stayed up all night trying to work out how to put the world right. Do you think by tomorrow morning you might discover that there are some people in your school who are greedy, some people who are selfish, some people who are proud, some people who get jealous? Do you think you’d find that right here in the school?”
And they said, “Yes” and began to name some names.
I said, “Don’t tell me any names. But that’s very interesting because five minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with the world. Now you tell me this is what’s wrong with the school. So supposing you didn’t do that. Supposing you went home tonight and you got your family together – your mom, your dad, your brothers, your sisters, your granny and you lock the doors and you said, ‘Hey listen, our world’s in a mess and our school’s in the same mess; people are self, proud, jealous, greedy. Let’s see if we can work out how to put the world right.’ Do you think by tomorrow morning you might discover that somebody in your family is a little bit selfish sometimes, somebody’s greedy, you find that’s somebody’s proud, you find in your family that somebody maybe is jealous sometimes?”
And they were slow to answer but somebody said, “Yes, my sister.”
I said, “Leave your sister out of this for a moment.”
Somebody said, “My granny.”
“Hey, come on, leave Granny alone.” But I said, “You told me ten minutes ago that’s what’s wrong with the world. Now you’re telling me that’s what’s wrong with your family. So supposing you didn’t go home tonight. You went down the road, climbed a tree, sat up a tree all night by yourself, saying to yourself, ‘The world’s in a mess, my school’s in a mess, my family’s in the same mess. They are greedy, they’re selfish, they’re proud, they’re jealous; let me see if I can work out how to put the world right.’ Do you think by tomorrow morning you might realize that you’re a teeny little bit greedy yourself, a little bit selfish once in a while, you’ve been known to be jealous, a little bit proud. Do you think that would be true?”
And they didn’t answer me. They smirked. So I pointed to one boy and I said, “What about you?”
And everybody else said, “Yeah, him!”
And I said, “Hey, leave it out the rest of you. I said, “What about you?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “That’s not good enough. Yes or no? Are you proud sometimes, selfish, greedy, jealous?”
He said, “I suppose so.”
I said, “No suppose so. Yes or no?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said. “What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
I said, “This is an interesting situation. Twenty minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with the world. Fifteen minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with my school. Ten minutes ago you told me that is what’s wrong with my family. Now you’re telling me this is what’s wrong with me. So what’s wrong with the world? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the world. You are. I am. So how do you solve the world? There’s only one way you can begin to solve the world and that is to look at yourself.”
You see James in the New Testament asks a very good question in James 4:1. He says,
“What causes fights and quarrels among you?”
I imagine that question has been asked at the United Nations again and again and again. And when you read the newspaper you scratch your head and you verbalize that question to yourself and when you watch the news on television; “what causes squabbles and fights among you?” Then James answers the question:
“Don’t these come from your desires that battle within you?”
Wow, that’s pretty blunt. But it’s true. You see, to understand the needs of our world, we may need to think long and hard about politics but the ultimate solution is not political; we’ve been around a long time and we’re not solving it. We may need to look at economics but the ultimate issue is not an economic one. We may look at our philosophies of life and the ultimate one is not in a philosophy. You have to look at the human heart. That’s why, by the way, you interpret the world theologically (if I can use a big word) if you want to understand it. We’ve got to understand this book and its diagnosis and, of course, its remedy. But there’s no remedy without diagnosis. And the diagnosis is: it’s the human heart that has fallen, that is corrupt, that is in need of repair. It is me that is my biggest problem.
Now I suspect many of us, or certainly many folks at large, make this assumption about human life, that most people are basically good, but there are a few around who are evil who mess it up for the rest of us. That is probably the most common understanding. We’re basically good but there are some who mess it up for us because they are evil.
Do you know Jesus, on the Sermon on the Mount, gave a diagnosis that was the exact opposite of that? Because over the page in Matthew 7:11 (and this is in the context of saying, “ask you will receive, knock the door will be opened, etc. God will give you as you seek) and He says in Verse 11:
“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Now the point I am drawing out of this is Jesus’ statement, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children”, He says you are basically evil but you can do good things. The diagnosis is not that we are basically good but some of us do evil; the diagnosis is we’re basically evil but some of us can do good, according to Jesus.
Now of course this is such a sobering diagnosis that we cannot begin to accept it and embrace it unless we know there’s a solution, which is why most of us don’t accept it because we don’t know there’s a solution.
You know in the early 20th Century, humanity declared itself to have come “of age”. That was an expression used in the early part of last century: “man has come of age”. With the industrial revolution behind us, with the tremendous advancement in things like medicine and science and technology, with the colonization by the developed nations of the undeveloped nations, which we thought was a good thing, the general feeling was that we are now masters of our own destiny. “We have come of age.” Even the blip of the Great War was described as the “war to end all wars.” In other words, okay, we’ve got to do this just to settle the issue, draw the lines of demarcation and end all wars by this war. That’s how the First World War was interpreted in its day. But you know that the 20th Century became the most bloody century in history, where we saw more exposed than perhaps ever before, the naked evils of things like Nazism and Communism, especially under Stalin, under Mao and the many millions who lost their lives. And whereas that has imploded – both those forces are pretty well negligible in our world – the 21st Century has opened to an obsession with international terrorism where there are no lines or demarcation; we don’t know where the next blow is coming from and who’s going to be the victim and people live in fear. And yet we still think we are basically good people. No, if the restraints are off, if there was anarchy (anarchy is when everybody does what he wants to do) we’d be shocked by the human heart.
My son is reading “Lord of the Flies” for school at the moment. Read “Lord of the Flies” and you’ll see what happens when the restraints are down. Yet in our hearts we still think we are essentially good. I have a letter upstairs from a man who is in prison for murdering his wife and he watches Living Truth on television. He has written to me several times. In his last letter as he was appealing for parole he told me in his letter, “I know that I am a good person at heart.” He just happens to be in prison for murdering his wife.
There’s a family I got to know in the States several years ago now. Six years ago I was back in the city where they live and I met with them. I invited the son who was eighteen years of age to come and have lunch with me. We went out for lunch and talked about what he was doing with his life. And I said, “Why don’t you come and invest a year in Bible School in England at Capenwray where I was then working and living and he came and spent a year with us. Right now he is on death row, age 24, in the United States, for murdering two people and attempting to murder a third. I was involved in a written explanation his lawyers asked me to give at his trial four months ago. But he wrote a document, which, when his guilt was so evident, was presented to those deciding on the sentence. And I have a copy of that document in which he says, amongst other things, as he tries to explain himself and his actions, his background, “I hope you will realize I am a good person at heart.” I love that kid and it’s a tragedy what has happened, but he killed two people, attempted to kill a third.
That’s why Jesus rarely talks about symptoms because we can produce all kinds of symptoms while the heart is a can of worms. He talks about causes. And when He talks about peacemaking, whereas we applaud those who sit around the negotiating tables to try to bring peace and to lessen tension in difficult places around the world – we’re glad about that; we rejoice in that – the real issue is dealing with the human heart.
So what exactly is the peace? If that is the problem, if the problem is: it’s not out there; it’s in here, what is the peace? I pointed out before that Jesus distinguished between peace in the inner life and peace in the outer world, you know. “I have told you these things”, He said to His disciples, “that in me you may have peace though in the world you will have trouble. In me there is peace.” This is something inner and internal. In the world there will be trouble. What is this peace He is talking about that’s “in me”?
The Bible speaks of two kinds of peace that address this inner need. And let me talk to you about these two briefly. First of all, the Bible talks about peace with God. In Romans 5:1,
“Therefore,” says Paul, “being justified by faith” (which was explained earlier and now here’s the fruit of it), “Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is where our basic conflict lies. If we are not reconciled to God, if we are not synchronized with God, if we are living in independence of God, you cannot make sense of life, because we were created to know Him and to live in the light of knowing Him. Otherwise was are just a lonely mass of atoms that come together and through some fluke, give you something called life and self-consciousness so that you know that you exist but you don’t know why you exist and what is the point of it all.
I listened to a lecture yesterday on cosmology. I don’t know much about it but I’m fascinated by it. And apparently, according to this teacher, there are as many known galaxies in the universe as there are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy. And what you see, by the way, with the naked eye, is minimal of what is there. And our galaxy itself: 100,000 light years across and there’s many galaxies. I mean, when you think of the vastness of the universe and there’s a limit to how much we do know and what lies beyond that, we don’t know. And you and I are just a very little, little speck on a very little planet that orbits a very little sun on the outer perimeter of the Milky Way. It makes you very small doesn’t it? It makes you very meaningless doesn’t it, if that’s all we are?
And we ourselves are made up apparently of trillions of drifting atoms that assemble to make you, you. And they co-operate to keep you intact and keep you functioning for a certain agreed period of time and then they begin to disassemble and you die. And those atoms go off to be something else. Because of all the atoms that make you, in one sense you have always existed - they were just something else before they were you. They are you now but they will be something else long after you have gone. And these atoms that make you, you (this is the purely biological explanation of our existence) are not alive themselves, have no minds, they have no feelings. So how do they make you, you?
One of the biggest dilemmas in life for people is how to create their own sense of significance, how to create their own sense of meaning, how to create their own sense of purpose. And you cannot be at peace in the lonely moments of your life when you look out at the vast sky and you say, “Who in the world am I, what in the world am I doing here, why in the world am I important? Am I important?” Of course I’m not in the light of that. And peace with God is where we’ve recognized that we are alienated from God, we’ve been separated from God through sin and that Christ is our substitute, satisfied the justice of God, the justice of His wrath, addressed His justice, satisfied it, and imputes to us, imparts to us His own righteousness.
“And therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
When you wake up in the morning, whatever else is happening around you, you know who you are and you know why you exist and you know who created you. And there is peace with God.
As Paul wrote to the Colossians in Colossians 1:19:
“And God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ and through him” (listen to this) “to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven,” (how?) “by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
All the reconciliation – not just of humanity there – but of all creation to God, funnels through the cross of Christ. That’s why if you don’t understand the cross of Christ, it is the pivotal moment of history whereby all God created was reconciled to Himself.
I ask you this morning: Have you have reconciled to God? Do you know what it is to have peace with God? Do you know it? Do you know it in a way, which somebody else cannot give it to you, as the Holy Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God? You know you are at peace with Him? Are you definite in that knowledge? Because you need to be.
But having spoken of peace with God, the second thing the Bible speaks about is the peace of God, which is something different. Peace with God is more objective; it’s a legal relationship into which I have been brought where nothing will now separate me from God and a peace with Him. Whereas the peace of God is a more subjective day-by-day experience which as Paul when he describes it in Colossians 3:15 he says,
“Let the peace of God rule in your heart.”
It’s a thing, which will rule, which will keep you stable, which will keep you steady, which will keep you balanced. It’ll rule in your heart. In Philippians 4 he says,
“Don’t be anxious about anything.”
Which is, you know, an unrealistic kind of thing to say to anybody, but Paul has reason for it. He says, “Don’t be anxious about anything, no matter what threatens you. But in everything (that would make you anxious), in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (that is: don’t keep it to yourself; give it to God, thanking Him for His sufficiency and His presence). And then he said this: “And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You present the situations of life to God day-by-day, moment-by-moment and the peace of God, which transcends understanding –it isn’t rational –, will guard your heart and your mind.
Now these are the two things about the peace of God. Let it rule in your heart, let it govern your heart in other words, and let it guard your heart. It will put walls of protection around you, that no matter what is happening (and rough, tough things happen in life), but it’s guarded. Why? By the peace of God, which floods your heart.
Peace is not the absence of conflict. That’s probably the kind of definition we would give of it. But peace is something to experience in the midst of conflict. That’s why Jesus said, “In this world - or He talked about, “My peace I give to you. In this world you will have trouble.” Why? Because one has the inner peace of God experienced in the midst of an outer world of conflict and tension and trouble.
I think I told you this story some time ago about a painting competition that was held in Britain some years ago. And the subject to be painted was peace and there were two prizewinners. One of these two prizewinners had gone to the Lake District in the northwest part of England, painted a beautiful picture of a lake in the foreground, beautiful mountain range in the background. The sky was blue (he must have taken some liberties with that) - just a couple of puffs of white cloud to break it up. The mountain was reflected in the calm waters of the lake. It was a beautiful picture. You looked at that picture and said to yourself there “That is so beautiful”. It made you feel warm; you wanted to go there. He called his picture “Peace” and he won second prize.
The other artist went down to the Cornish Peninsula in the southwest part of England that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and he painted a picture where, across half the picture was a cliff that came down into the Atlantic. And there was an almighty storm taking place and the waters were churned up and huge waves were rolling in and beating against the base of the cliff. There was a gale blowing, there was tree on the cliff at a 45-degree angle as the gales came in from the ocean. The sky was thick and black, the rain was beating down; there was a lightening bolt across one side of the top corner. You looked in the picture and you thought to yourself, “I’m glad I’m not there; I’m glad I’m indoors.” It made you feel cold and damp. But two thirds of the way up the cliff there was a cleft in the rock and in the cleft of the rock there was a nest and on the nest there was a gull - its eyes were closed. And he called his picture “Peace” and he won first prize.
You see the peace of God is not the peace of the tranquil Lake District scene. If that is your lot in life, rejoice and enjoy it while it lasts. But that does not pass understanding; that’s perfectly understandable. The peace of God, which transcends understanding, as Paul describes it, is in the midst of the storm, to know a security and a peace and a rest in God. And the peace of God is to rule our hearts, it’s to guard and protect our hearts.
But the word here is peacemaker. You’ve got to be at peace to be a peacemaker. But then having come to experience peace with God and knowing the peace of God, we become sharers of the peace formula, if you like. That’s why every church, every Christian church, is to be an evangelistic church. Every Christian is to be an evangelistic Christian, meaning that what we’ve experienced of God, we long to bring others into for themselves. And that’s why I think He says,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
I scratched my head a lot about this, this last week and some of the commentaries aren’t that helpful as to what does it mean, “They will be called sons of God”? There is a general sense in which all Christians are called sons of God. Galatians 3:26 says,
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
You were brought into that relationship, that sonship; you are a child of God. So what does He mean when He says to those who are peacemakers in particular will be called sons of God? It seems to me that the most logical conclusion I can come to is that this is stating that those who are peacemakers are sons of God in the sense that you share the ministry of God, you become partakers in the work of God. And in that sense you act as sons of God.
You see five times in the New Testament it uses the term, “the God of peace”. It says of Jesus, the Son, He is called the “Prince of Peace”. The Holy Spirit’s ministry involves producing the fruit of the Spirit in people’s lives and the fruit include peace. In fact, regarding the Spirit, it says in Ephesians 4,
“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
The whole Trinity are involved in peace. They are described as being peace, the God of Peace, the Prince of Peace and the Spirit who is the source of peace. And therefore, to be peacemakers means that we have hitched our lives to God’s agenda and strategy and purpose in this world and we are sons of God in the sense that we express the ministry of God and we share in the purposes of God.
Do you know this in your own life and then if you know it, are you are a peacemaker? We look sometimes with sympathy and sometimes with pity at peoples’ lives that are so messed up. Why not get involved in saying, “Lord, how can I share with them the very thing, which would put their lives back together in a way that is whole and synchronized?”
When I talked to this class in New Zealand and said, “So, what is the problem? It’s you; it’s me. What do we do about that? Anybody here,” I said, “ever tried New Years’ resolutions to try and fix something you keep doing that you don’t want to do so you say, ‘On January the first onwards I will not do this or I will do something I don’t do’? Anybody tried New Years’ resolutions? Do they work?”
Nobody said they worked.
How do you fix this inherent bias? You can’t do it alone. We need to be fixed. We need a Saviour. I said to these kids, “I’m with you in a public school and I can’t tell you everything I’d like to tell you. I want to tell you this: if you are serious about getting fixed, take a look in this book. Start to look for Jesus. Start to ask the question. I have an enormous need in my life and if He is equal to that need, the most important thing in my life would be that I get to know Him and I be reconciled to Him and I experience peace with God.”
And my prayer this morning is that there will be those amongst us in our congregation and those of you who are watching on television and there are many of you who, in looking into the Word of God with me this morning, have been looking into a mirror. And you say, “But that is where my issues lie”. And whenever God makes the diagnosis, it’s not to leave you frustrated but to provide the solution Himself, reconciling you to God, cleansing you, forgiving you and by His Holy Spirit coming to live within you, that the peace of God might rule in your heart, might guard your heart and that you then will go out to be a peacemaker that makes an impact on the world of which we are a part.
And if you don’t know Christ this morning, we will give you an opportunity to come to know Him for yourself. This will be the starting point. And if you know Him but you have not been experiencing His peace, it’s so easy to drift away, to become oriented to the problems the anxiety causes, rather than to God Himself. And you too can come back to Him this morning and confess and say, “Lord, please re-synchronize my life with Yours”. And if you are a Christian but you have not been a peacemaker, you’ve not been saying, “Lord, how can I be involved in bringing Christ into the needy hearts of people that I am in touch with?” Would you ask Him to show you and say, “I’m willing to be obedient in that”? Because then you will be what Jesus called a son of God. There isn’t a higher accolade than that. What God is doing, you will be doing. And that will be the most wonderful thing in your life.
Let’s pray together. Father, we thank You from our hearts this morning that You don’t leave us to lurch through life, hoping we might find some even keel somewhere, somehow. But You reveal to us both the bad news of our own heart’s condition. In separation from You the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it? But you provide for us the solution of Christ forgiving us of our sin and guilt and then imparting to that very heart where the sin has been cleansed, His life, by the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us and synchronize our lives with Yours, that we live in peace and harmony and become a peacemaker to those who need to know You for themselves. Write this into our hearts as life and reality, we pray. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Part 7: Matt 5:9 ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God’.
Pastor Charles Price
I am going to read to you one verse from Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 5 verse 9. This is one of the beatitudes, as we call them, the statements that mark the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, which was the most concentrated statement that Jesus ever made publicly when he addressed a crowd there on the mountainside. And in Verse 9 He said this:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Those of you who have been with us in recent weeks will know that we have been looking at these statements, these beatitudes of Jesus. They are not random statements. The word “blessed” literally means to be happy. That’s the meaning of the word that lies behind this, the word “markariŏs”. And there is a progression beginning with the first and building on through to the eighth and recognizing first our poverty of spirit (the first step to real happiness), mourning that poverty, meekly submitting ourselves to Christ. Out of that we discover a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. We become more concerned to give than to get. We’re merciful, we’re compassionate and we become pure in heart. I described that last time – the real word there meaning single-minded, was what I suggested to you – “this one thing I do”, knowing what life is about.
But I want to ask this question now: What kind of impact does this person have on the world? If we’re living in the light of these beatitudes, what kind of impact might we expect to have on the world? And the last two tell us. First of all, in Verse 9, “Blessed are the peacemakers”, said Jesus. And then in Verse 10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.” Now these two may seem in conflict. On the one hand, peacemakers; on the other hand, the violence that is implied in persecution. It isn’t just here that these two ideas go together. Jesus said to His disciples in John 16:33 – He was very blunt with them – He said, “I have told you these things that in me you may have peace. But in this world you will have trouble.” Now He said, “in Me”. That is: “In My union with you, said Jesus, “in your internal life you will have peace, but in your external world you’re actually going to have trouble.”
And this internal, this external comes together in these two beatitudes. We’re going to look just at the first one this morning. We’re going to talk about what it means, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Now I have been living in Canada for several years now and we love this place, and I observe that peace is a very high value in the nation of Canada. The United Nation Peacekeeping Forces, which have served our world well, currently in about sixteen theatres of operation, was a Canadian initiative, as you probably know. In 1956 when the President of Egypt, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal (which had been owned privately by a French and a British Company), the French and the British tried to come in and re-take it because it was taking a strategic access from Europe to Asia as a trade access and threatening it. Israel took advantage of the instability and began to attack Egypt. And then it looked as though the Egyptians might bring the Russians in to assist them, and the Israelis may bring in the Americans. And it looked like this Suez Canal (which is actually no wider than the property in which we are today), was going to be the flashpoint for a world global showdown.
Now at the United Nations in New York, Lester Pearson who was then the Foreign Minister, proposed a force of peacekeeping soldiers from non-competitive countries, which would protect the canal while this issue was being resolved. And ever since then the peacekeeping forces of the United Nations of course have played a key role in our world. In fact 100,000 Canadians have served in them in 64 operations outside of Canada, Canada is well-known for this, for its soldiers wearing the blue helmets that say, “Don’t shoot me because I don’t have anything to shoot you back with; I’m a peacekeeper.”
Well that’s a good thing – very good thing. Because in actual fact, the Society of International Law in London have published research into 3600 years of recorded history and they state that there have been 14,351 documented wars, both large and small during that period in which 3.64 billion people have died, as a result of conflict. And by the way, most of those wars were in times when the only people who fought them were soldiers; civilians were not involved because it was almost hand-to-hand. That’s a huge amount of people that have died as a result of conflict. In the last three centuries alone, 286 wars have been waged on the continent of Europe alone, according to that same document.
Now actually this should be of no surprise to readers of the Bible. Jesus had said to His disciples, “In this world you will have trouble”(don’t be surprised by it). And yet the message of Jesus and the message of the New Testament is also a message of peace. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, angels appeared to shepherds, you remember, out on the hillside, and amongst their message was, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.” And yet within a very short time the very birth of Jesus had been the catalyst for incredible violence in Bethlehem when Herod authored the death of every baby boy under two years of age, in an attempt to destroy the Messiah. And I imagine that some of these shepherds were fathers of little baby boys and they had heard the message, “Peace on Earth” and seen the slaughter that had taken place so very soon afterwards.
To His disciples, Jesus said in John 14,
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”
And then He qualified it:
“Not as the world gives, give I unto you.”
“I am talking about something different to what the world would understand by this statement.” Because Jesus also said to His disciples in Matthew 10:34,
“Do not suppose I’ve come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be members of his own household.”
Some of you know about that; that the coming of Christ into your life has created tension in your home - not peace - and in your relationships.
And of course there was the brutality of Jesus’ own life, as the recipient of such opposition and subsequently brutality. There was the brutality against the early church that is documented in the Book of Acts and also beyond that. Yet this beatitude says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” How do we understand this in the light of the awful realities of life and the realities of history?
Well let me talk about two things to help us to understand this. First of all, let me talk about what I’m calling the problem, simply the problem. Why is it that peace seems such an alien thing in our world? Then I’ll talk secondly about the peace. What is the peace that is spoken? Now I am aware of course this is about being a peacemaker, not blessed to those who are at peace. That’s one thing; that isn’t what this is about. Blessed are those who are the peacemakers”; that is something proactive, something dynamic, something influential and we’ll come to that in just a few moments.
But first of all let me talk about the problem. I remember some years ago I was in New Zealand and I was conducting a week of meetings in a city there. I was invited for two or three mornings to go to a local high school, which I was very glad to do, and I was speaking to a group of kids in the school one morning. And when I began I said, “I don’t know too much about you folks. I don’t know what you think, I don’t know what you feel about life, but I want to ask you a question.” I said, “You are not responsible for the world that you are growing up in. Your parents, your grandparents, previous generations have created the kind of world that you are living in right now. I want to ask you this question: Do you like the world that they are passing to you?”
And after various comments were made, the general consensus was “No, we don’t like the state of the world.”
So I said, “Alright, I want you to tell me what you think is wrong with the world. I have a piece of chalk here and we have got a chalk board and I’m going to write down on the chalk board the kind of things that you think are wrong with the world. And then we’ll talk about them.”
Well they began by saying silly things like teachers and parents and politicians and policemen and all that. So I said, “Let me just hold on a second before I write anything down. I am not going to write those words down but”, I said to them, “it’s interesting that all those you’ve named happened to be people. Nobody here says ‘cats are what’s wrong with the world’, you know, ‘mice are what’s wrong with the world’, ‘flies are what’s wrong with the world. It’s people. So let’s be a little smarter than this. Tell me what’s wrong with people. You tell me some things that are wrong with people and these are the things we will write down.” So, I’ve forgotten the order in which they came. Somebody put a hand up and I said, “Yes.”
He said, “People are greedy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there are people who just want to accumulate more and more and more and in the process other people get damaged and hurt.”
I said, “Well that’s a good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘greedy’ on the board.
Somebody said, “People are proud.”
I said, “What do you mean by that?”
“Well some people think they are better than other people and so they think they, you know, live slightly elite above them and they try to push them down. You know, a bit like Hitler wanting to cleanse Europe of Jews and that kind of thing, because the Arian race was more important.”
“Good one.” I wrote down that word ‘proud’.
Somebody else put their hand up and said, “People are selfish.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they’re just concerned with me, me, me and you know, half the world goes to bed with fat stomachs; the other half goes to bed hungry. And the half that have got everything hardly seem to care about the half who’ve got nothing.”
“That’s a good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘greedy’.
Somebody said, “People are jealous.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there are some people who don’t have very much and they don’t like the fact that other people have more than they do so they want to spoil it for them and destroy it for them.”
“Okay, good one.” So I wrote down the word ‘jealousy’. They gave me some others but that’ll do. So I said, “Alright, so what we’ve written on this board here are what you say is wrong with the world. People are proud, people are greedy, people are jealous; people are selfish. Is that right?”
And they said, “Yes.”
I said, “Just suppose tonight instead of going home at the end of the day, you got the whole school together into the gymnasium or whatever building you’ve got and you closed the doors and you get up and you say, ‘Hey listen school, our world is in a mess. People are proud, people are selfish, people are greedy, people are jealous.’ And supposing you stayed up all night trying to work out how to put the world right. Do you think by tomorrow morning you might discover that there are some people in your school who are greedy, some people who are selfish, some people who are proud, some people who get jealous? Do you think you’d find that right here in the school?”
And they said, “Yes” and began to name some names.
I said, “Don’t tell me any names. But that’s very interesting because five minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with the world. Now you tell me this is what’s wrong with the school. So supposing you didn’t do that. Supposing you went home tonight and you got your family together – your mom, your dad, your brothers, your sisters, your granny and you lock the doors and you said, ‘Hey listen, our world’s in a mess and our school’s in the same mess; people are self, proud, jealous, greedy. Let’s see if we can work out how to put the world right.’ Do you think by tomorrow morning you might discover that somebody in your family is a little bit selfish sometimes, somebody’s greedy, you find that’s somebody’s proud, you find in your family that somebody maybe is jealous sometimes?”
And they were slow to answer but somebody said, “Yes, my sister.”
I said, “Leave your sister out of this for a moment.”
Somebody said, “My granny.”
“Hey, come on, leave Granny alone.” But I said, “You told me ten minutes ago that’s what’s wrong with the world. Now you’re telling me that’s what’s wrong with your family. So supposing you didn’t go home tonight. You went down the road, climbed a tree, sat up a tree all night by yourself, saying to yourself, ‘The world’s in a mess, my school’s in a mess, my family’s in the same mess. They are greedy, they’re selfish, they’re proud, they’re jealous; let me see if I can work out how to put the world right.’ Do you think by tomorrow morning you might realize that you’re a teeny little bit greedy yourself, a little bit selfish once in a while, you’ve been known to be jealous, a little bit proud. Do you think that would be true?”
And they didn’t answer me. They smirked. So I pointed to one boy and I said, “What about you?”
And everybody else said, “Yeah, him!”
And I said, “Hey, leave it out the rest of you. I said, “What about you?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “That’s not good enough. Yes or no? Are you proud sometimes, selfish, greedy, jealous?”
He said, “I suppose so.”
I said, “No suppose so. Yes or no?”
He said, “Yes.”
I said. “What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
“Yes.”
I said, “This is an interesting situation. Twenty minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with the world. Fifteen minutes ago you told me this is what’s wrong with my school. Ten minutes ago you told me that is what’s wrong with my family. Now you’re telling me this is what’s wrong with me. So what’s wrong with the world? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the world. You are. I am. So how do you solve the world? There’s only one way you can begin to solve the world and that is to look at yourself.”
You see James in the New Testament asks a very good question in James 4:1. He says,
“What causes fights and quarrels among you?”
I imagine that question has been asked at the United Nations again and again and again. And when you read the newspaper you scratch your head and you verbalize that question to yourself and when you watch the news on television; “what causes squabbles and fights among you?” Then James answers the question:
“Don’t these come from your desires that battle within you?”
Wow, that’s pretty blunt. But it’s true. You see, to understand the needs of our world, we may need to think long and hard about politics but the ultimate solution is not political; we’ve been around a long time and we’re not solving it. We may need to look at economics but the ultimate issue is not an economic one. We may look at our philosophies of life and the ultimate one is not in a philosophy. You have to look at the human heart. That’s why, by the way, you interpret the world theologically (if I can use a big word) if you want to understand it. We’ve got to understand this book and its diagnosis and, of course, its remedy. But there’s no remedy without diagnosis. And the diagnosis is: it’s the human heart that has fallen, that is corrupt, that is in need of repair. It is me that is my biggest problem.
Now I suspect many of us, or certainly many folks at large, make this assumption about human life, that most people are basically good, but there are a few around who are evil who mess it up for the rest of us. That is probably the most common understanding. We’re basically good but there are some who mess it up for us because they are evil.
Do you know Jesus, on the Sermon on the Mount, gave a diagnosis that was the exact opposite of that? Because over the page in Matthew 7:11 (and this is in the context of saying, “ask you will receive, knock the door will be opened, etc. God will give you as you seek) and He says in Verse 11:
“If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Now the point I am drawing out of this is Jesus’ statement, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children”, He says you are basically evil but you can do good things. The diagnosis is not that we are basically good but some of us do evil; the diagnosis is we’re basically evil but some of us can do good, according to Jesus.
Now of course this is such a sobering diagnosis that we cannot begin to accept it and embrace it unless we know there’s a solution, which is why most of us don’t accept it because we don’t know there’s a solution.
You know in the early 20th Century, humanity declared itself to have come “of age”. That was an expression used in the early part of last century: “man has come of age”. With the industrial revolution behind us, with the tremendous advancement in things like medicine and science and technology, with the colonization by the developed nations of the undeveloped nations, which we thought was a good thing, the general feeling was that we are now masters of our own destiny. “We have come of age.” Even the blip of the Great War was described as the “war to end all wars.” In other words, okay, we’ve got to do this just to settle the issue, draw the lines of demarcation and end all wars by this war. That’s how the First World War was interpreted in its day. But you know that the 20th Century became the most bloody century in history, where we saw more exposed than perhaps ever before, the naked evils of things like Nazism and Communism, especially under Stalin, under Mao and the many millions who lost their lives. And whereas that has imploded – both those forces are pretty well negligible in our world – the 21st Century has opened to an obsession with international terrorism where there are no lines or demarcation; we don’t know where the next blow is coming from and who’s going to be the victim and people live in fear. And yet we still think we are basically good people. No, if the restraints are off, if there was anarchy (anarchy is when everybody does what he wants to do) we’d be shocked by the human heart.
My son is reading “Lord of the Flies” for school at the moment. Read “Lord of the Flies” and you’ll see what happens when the restraints are down. Yet in our hearts we still think we are essentially good. I have a letter upstairs from a man who is in prison for murdering his wife and he watches Living Truth on television. He has written to me several times. In his last letter as he was appealing for parole he told me in his letter, “I know that I am a good person at heart.” He just happens to be in prison for murdering his wife.
There’s a family I got to know in the States several years ago now. Six years ago I was back in the city where they live and I met with them. I invited the son who was eighteen years of age to come and have lunch with me. We went out for lunch and talked about what he was doing with his life. And I said, “Why don’t you come and invest a year in Bible School in England at Capenwray where I was then working and living and he came and spent a year with us. Right now he is on death row, age 24, in the United States, for murdering two people and attempting to murder a third. I was involved in a written explanation his lawyers asked me to give at his trial four months ago. But he wrote a document, which, when his guilt was so evident, was presented to those deciding on the sentence. And I have a copy of that document in which he says, amongst other things, as he tries to explain himself and his actions, his background, “I hope you will realize I am a good person at heart.” I love that kid and it’s a tragedy what has happened, but he killed two people, attempted to kill a third.
That’s why Jesus rarely talks about symptoms because we can produce all kinds of symptoms while the heart is a can of worms. He talks about causes. And when He talks about peacemaking, whereas we applaud those who sit around the negotiating tables to try to bring peace and to lessen tension in difficult places around the world – we’re glad about that; we rejoice in that – the real issue is dealing with the human heart.
So what exactly is the peace? If that is the problem, if the problem is: it’s not out there; it’s in here, what is the peace? I pointed out before that Jesus distinguished between peace in the inner life and peace in the outer world, you know. “I have told you these things”, He said to His disciples, “that in me you may have peace though in the world you will have trouble. In me there is peace.” This is something inner and internal. In the world there will be trouble. What is this peace He is talking about that’s “in me”?
The Bible speaks of two kinds of peace that address this inner need. And let me talk to you about these two briefly. First of all, the Bible talks about peace with God. In Romans 5:1,
“Therefore,” says Paul, “being justified by faith” (which was explained earlier and now here’s the fruit of it), “Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is where our basic conflict lies. If we are not reconciled to God, if we are not synchronized with God, if we are living in independence of God, you cannot make sense of life, because we were created to know Him and to live in the light of knowing Him. Otherwise was are just a lonely mass of atoms that come together and through some fluke, give you something called life and self-consciousness so that you know that you exist but you don’t know why you exist and what is the point of it all.
I listened to a lecture yesterday on cosmology. I don’t know much about it but I’m fascinated by it. And apparently, according to this teacher, there are as many known galaxies in the universe as there are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy. And what you see, by the way, with the naked eye, is minimal of what is there. And our galaxy itself: 100,000 light years across and there’s many galaxies. I mean, when you think of the vastness of the universe and there’s a limit to how much we do know and what lies beyond that, we don’t know. And you and I are just a very little, little speck on a very little planet that orbits a very little sun on the outer perimeter of the Milky Way. It makes you very small doesn’t it? It makes you very meaningless doesn’t it, if that’s all we are?
And we ourselves are made up apparently of trillions of drifting atoms that assemble to make you, you. And they co-operate to keep you intact and keep you functioning for a certain agreed period of time and then they begin to disassemble and you die. And those atoms go off to be something else. Because of all the atoms that make you, in one sense you have always existed - they were just something else before they were you. They are you now but they will be something else long after you have gone. And these atoms that make you, you (this is the purely biological explanation of our existence) are not alive themselves, have no minds, they have no feelings. So how do they make you, you?
One of the biggest dilemmas in life for people is how to create their own sense of significance, how to create their own sense of meaning, how to create their own sense of purpose. And you cannot be at peace in the lonely moments of your life when you look out at the vast sky and you say, “Who in the world am I, what in the world am I doing here, why in the world am I important? Am I important?” Of course I’m not in the light of that. And peace with God is where we’ve recognized that we are alienated from God, we’ve been separated from God through sin and that Christ is our substitute, satisfied the justice of God, the justice of His wrath, addressed His justice, satisfied it, and imputes to us, imparts to us His own righteousness.
“And therefore since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
When you wake up in the morning, whatever else is happening around you, you know who you are and you know why you exist and you know who created you. And there is peace with God.
As Paul wrote to the Colossians in Colossians 1:19:
“And God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ and through him” (listen to this) “to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven,” (how?) “by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
All the reconciliation – not just of humanity there – but of all creation to God, funnels through the cross of Christ. That’s why if you don’t understand the cross of Christ, it is the pivotal moment of history whereby all God created was reconciled to Himself.
I ask you this morning: Have you have reconciled to God? Do you know what it is to have peace with God? Do you know it? Do you know it in a way, which somebody else cannot give it to you, as the Holy Spirit bears witness with your spirit that you are a child of God? You know you are at peace with Him? Are you definite in that knowledge? Because you need to be.
But having spoken of peace with God, the second thing the Bible speaks about is the peace of God, which is something different. Peace with God is more objective; it’s a legal relationship into which I have been brought where nothing will now separate me from God and a peace with Him. Whereas the peace of God is a more subjective day-by-day experience which as Paul when he describes it in Colossians 3:15 he says,
“Let the peace of God rule in your heart.”
It’s a thing, which will rule, which will keep you stable, which will keep you steady, which will keep you balanced. It’ll rule in your heart. In Philippians 4 he says,
“Don’t be anxious about anything.”
Which is, you know, an unrealistic kind of thing to say to anybody, but Paul has reason for it. He says, “Don’t be anxious about anything, no matter what threatens you. But in everything (that would make you anxious), in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (that is: don’t keep it to yourself; give it to God, thanking Him for His sufficiency and His presence). And then he said this: “And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” You present the situations of life to God day-by-day, moment-by-moment and the peace of God, which transcends understanding –it isn’t rational –, will guard your heart and your mind.
Now these are the two things about the peace of God. Let it rule in your heart, let it govern your heart in other words, and let it guard your heart. It will put walls of protection around you, that no matter what is happening (and rough, tough things happen in life), but it’s guarded. Why? By the peace of God, which floods your heart.
Peace is not the absence of conflict. That’s probably the kind of definition we would give of it. But peace is something to experience in the midst of conflict. That’s why Jesus said, “In this world - or He talked about, “My peace I give to you. In this world you will have trouble.” Why? Because one has the inner peace of God experienced in the midst of an outer world of conflict and tension and trouble.
I think I told you this story some time ago about a painting competition that was held in Britain some years ago. And the subject to be painted was peace and there were two prizewinners. One of these two prizewinners had gone to the Lake District in the northwest part of England, painted a beautiful picture of a lake in the foreground, beautiful mountain range in the background. The sky was blue (he must have taken some liberties with that) - just a couple of puffs of white cloud to break it up. The mountain was reflected in the calm waters of the lake. It was a beautiful picture. You looked at that picture and said to yourself there “That is so beautiful”. It made you feel warm; you wanted to go there. He called his picture “Peace” and he won second prize.
The other artist went down to the Cornish Peninsula in the southwest part of England that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and he painted a picture where, across half the picture was a cliff that came down into the Atlantic. And there was an almighty storm taking place and the waters were churned up and huge waves were rolling in and beating against the base of the cliff. There was a gale blowing, there was tree on the cliff at a 45-degree angle as the gales came in from the ocean. The sky was thick and black, the rain was beating down; there was a lightening bolt across one side of the top corner. You looked in the picture and you thought to yourself, “I’m glad I’m not there; I’m glad I’m indoors.” It made you feel cold and damp. But two thirds of the way up the cliff there was a cleft in the rock and in the cleft of the rock there was a nest and on the nest there was a gull - its eyes were closed. And he called his picture “Peace” and he won first prize.
You see the peace of God is not the peace of the tranquil Lake District scene. If that is your lot in life, rejoice and enjoy it while it lasts. But that does not pass understanding; that’s perfectly understandable. The peace of God, which transcends understanding, as Paul describes it, is in the midst of the storm, to know a security and a peace and a rest in God. And the peace of God is to rule our hearts, it’s to guard and protect our hearts.
But the word here is peacemaker. You’ve got to be at peace to be a peacemaker. But then having come to experience peace with God and knowing the peace of God, we become sharers of the peace formula, if you like. That’s why every church, every Christian church, is to be an evangelistic church. Every Christian is to be an evangelistic Christian, meaning that what we’ve experienced of God, we long to bring others into for themselves. And that’s why I think He says,
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
I scratched my head a lot about this, this last week and some of the commentaries aren’t that helpful as to what does it mean, “They will be called sons of God”? There is a general sense in which all Christians are called sons of God. Galatians 3:26 says,
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
You were brought into that relationship, that sonship; you are a child of God. So what does He mean when He says to those who are peacemakers in particular will be called sons of God? It seems to me that the most logical conclusion I can come to is that this is stating that those who are peacemakers are sons of God in the sense that you share the ministry of God, you become partakers in the work of God. And in that sense you act as sons of God.
You see five times in the New Testament it uses the term, “the God of peace”. It says of Jesus, the Son, He is called the “Prince of Peace”. The Holy Spirit’s ministry involves producing the fruit of the Spirit in people’s lives and the fruit include peace. In fact, regarding the Spirit, it says in Ephesians 4,
“Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”
The whole Trinity are involved in peace. They are described as being peace, the God of Peace, the Prince of Peace and the Spirit who is the source of peace. And therefore, to be peacemakers means that we have hitched our lives to God’s agenda and strategy and purpose in this world and we are sons of God in the sense that we express the ministry of God and we share in the purposes of God.
Do you know this in your own life and then if you know it, are you are a peacemaker? We look sometimes with sympathy and sometimes with pity at peoples’ lives that are so messed up. Why not get involved in saying, “Lord, how can I share with them the very thing, which would put their lives back together in a way that is whole and synchronized?”
When I talked to this class in New Zealand and said, “So, what is the problem? It’s you; it’s me. What do we do about that? Anybody here,” I said, “ever tried New Years’ resolutions to try and fix something you keep doing that you don’t want to do so you say, ‘On January the first onwards I will not do this or I will do something I don’t do’? Anybody tried New Years’ resolutions? Do they work?”
Nobody said they worked.
How do you fix this inherent bias? You can’t do it alone. We need to be fixed. We need a Saviour. I said to these kids, “I’m with you in a public school and I can’t tell you everything I’d like to tell you. I want to tell you this: if you are serious about getting fixed, take a look in this book. Start to look for Jesus. Start to ask the question. I have an enormous need in my life and if He is equal to that need, the most important thing in my life would be that I get to know Him and I be reconciled to Him and I experience peace with God.”
And my prayer this morning is that there will be those amongst us in our congregation and those of you who are watching on television and there are many of you who, in looking into the Word of God with me this morning, have been looking into a mirror. And you say, “But that is where my issues lie”. And whenever God makes the diagnosis, it’s not to leave you frustrated but to provide the solution Himself, reconciling you to God, cleansing you, forgiving you and by His Holy Spirit coming to live within you, that the peace of God might rule in your heart, might guard your heart and that you then will go out to be a peacemaker that makes an impact on the world of which we are a part.
And if you don’t know Christ this morning, we will give you an opportunity to come to know Him for yourself. This will be the starting point. And if you know Him but you have not been experiencing His peace, it’s so easy to drift away, to become oriented to the problems the anxiety causes, rather than to God Himself. And you too can come back to Him this morning and confess and say, “Lord, please re-synchronize my life with Yours”. And if you are a Christian but you have not been a peacemaker, you’ve not been saying, “Lord, how can I be involved in bringing Christ into the needy hearts of people that I am in touch with?” Would you ask Him to show you and say, “I’m willing to be obedient in that”? Because then you will be what Jesus called a son of God. There isn’t a higher accolade than that. What God is doing, you will be doing. And that will be the most wonderful thing in your life.
Let’s pray together. Father, we thank You from our hearts this morning that You don’t leave us to lurch through life, hoping we might find some even keel somewhere, somehow. But You reveal to us both the bad news of our own heart’s condition. In separation from You the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it? But you provide for us the solution of Christ forgiving us of our sin and guilt and then imparting to that very heart where the sin has been cleansed, His life, by the gift of the Holy Spirit to live in us and synchronize our lives with Yours, that we live in peace and harmony and become a peacemaker to those who need to know You for themselves. Write this into our hearts as life and reality, we pray. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, Amen.