Matthew 5:9 - July 14, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church

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I really do appreciate the opportunity to go through a time of communion again, as I read and as I study, it just becomes so much more significant, all these things.

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There's so much meaning, it goes so much deeper than just the thing that we do. So that's why

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I continue to bring attention to how important it is. And on that note, we'll move on to continue our look at the

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Beatitudes. We're in Matthew 5, 9 today. The Beatitudes says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

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Now, to start out today, I want to tell you a quick story about a friend of mine who's also a pastor of a church. And his church is and has been for a long time part of a particular denomination.

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And this isn't a denomination that everybody knows about. It's not like the Methodist Church or the Baptist Church or the

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Lutheran Church or whatever. But nonetheless, there's churches from this denomination all over the place.

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So this man moved his family to the area where the church is, just a little south of here, probably 10 to 12 years ago.

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And where he found himself was in a situation where he was looking at having to basically replant and revitalize a church that was really shrinking and probably on the verge of closing its doors.

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So fast forward to today, and this church has grown quite a bit. There's a decent number of people going, and me and my family have been.

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It's a very vibrant church. There's lots of families. There's just people of all ages that have gathered there to worship

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God and to seek the Lord. But the denomination, like so many other large organizations, has decided to make some theological changes, theological changes about things they believe and things they stand for that my friend and the people of his church don't agree with.

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And that they, even more importantly, don't believe align with God's word. And after a lot of discussion, the church decided that it was best, in everyone's best interest, for them to leave the denomination as they had come to a point where no one's mind was gonna change on these issues.

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So given that, the church decided that they would begin the process of disaffiliation from their denomination.

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But as you all know, it's not always that simple. And the denomination, as a result of some contractual things that were in their agreement, decided to make a claim on the church's building.

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So they're basically saying that now, since they're leaving the denomination, the church needs to leave and turn the facility over to them.

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But this is really interesting to me because it's my understanding, anyway, that the denomination doesn't actually own the building.

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The church owns the building. But there's a little bit of language in their denominational agreement that causes the building to revert to the denomination if they leave for certain reasons.

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Now, the reasons that they're leaving would seem to be reasons that would not result in the denomination taking over the building.

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So they reached out, and apparently the denomination disagreed. And so to make an already long story just a little bit shorter, the church made several offers to their denomination in order to try to reach sort of a friendly separation.

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I mean, they even offered them a large financial donation to help cushion the fact that they would be leaving.

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But the denomination has rejected all of these things. And basically, now they have till the end of the month to reach an agreement and figure out whether the church is going to be able to stay, if they're going to turn the building over, what's going to happen.

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And I asked my friend, I said to him, are you headed to litigation now? Like, is this about to go to court?

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And he said, I hope not, obviously. Because they, rightfully, don't see litigation as a viable option between Christians, and they get this from 1

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Corinthians 6, 1 through 8. And I just want to read real quick what that says.

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It says, does any one of you, when he has a case against another, dare to be tried before the unrighteous and not before the saints?

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Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not worthy to constitute the smallest law courts?

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Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint those who are of no account in the church as judges?

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I say this to your shame. Is it really this way? There is not one wise man among you who will be able to pass judgment between his brothers?

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On the contrary, brother is tried with brother and that before unbelievers. Actually then, it is already a failure for you that you have lawsuits with one another.

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Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? On the contrary, you yourselves wrong and defraud.

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You do this even to your brothers. So the point of this is that two groups of Christians should not have to result to legal action to solve disputes between one another.

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And this phrase here that I just read, where was it? It's a failure that you have lawsuits with one another.

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Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? He's even saying that in some circumstances, it's better for you to just deal with being wrong than it is to take somebody to court to fight this thing.

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And this issue that my friend has, it ties in a lot of ways with our beatitude today.

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Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. And we'll talk about this hopefully a little bit later.

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But a lot like the other beatitudes that we've looked at, this is another one that has been used in ways that I would suggest to you is not what

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Jesus intended. This is one of those ones that has been just mauled and mutilated in order to serve a purpose that's not what the

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Bible is wanting us to do. Now, a lot of times,

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I remind you that a plain reading of Scripture and just a plain interpretation of Scripture is usually the best way to go about it.

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You know, we don't have to look for some secret meaning. We don't have to look for some, you know, complicated, convoluted sort of twisting of a verse to figure out what it means.

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But what if there are other passages that seem like they contradict it?

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So then what do you do? So, for example, if we consider this, blessed are the peacemakers, that's pretty straightforward in some ways.

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But if we go just a few chapters later to Matthew 10 .34, Jesus says this, do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth.

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I did not come to bring peace but a sword. So now, if you have a plain reading of Matthew 5 .9

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and a plain reading of Matthew 10 .34, it looks like the

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Bible contradicts itself. So what do we do with that?

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How do we respond? How do we think about that? Well, I would suggest that there's three ways that we can think about that.

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A lot of people take the first one. The first one is just to pick whichever verse we like more and pretend that the other one doesn't exist.

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We close our eyes and plug our ears and we just don't ever read it. We don't ever preach about it.

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We don't ever study it. So this is the way that certain denominations of Christians just became absolute pacifists.

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You know, the Anabaptist kind of, there's absolutely no circumstance in the entire world where violence of any kind is right.

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And that's a difficult thing to reconcile with a lot of Scripture. But that's one option.

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Just take the verse we like and ignore the verse we don't like. Now, the second option is just to throw our hands in the air and say, the

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Bible is full of contradictions. How could you possibly believe what it says? We should just disregard it.

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And this is the position that a lot of atheists take, for example. And it's also the position that a lot of people that are called ex -evangelicals, people that have left the church, people that grew up in the church and as adults have walked away, we also call this deconstructing their faith.

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This is the position that a lot of those people take. I can't even begin to count the number of times that I've heard or read this.

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You know, it's like they say, well, the Bible contradicts itself all over the place. And they'll give examples.

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This is one of the examples. You know, it seems like these are two opposite things that Jesus said both of them.

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Now, I do want to say a word about these types of people. Sometimes people are just looking for an out.

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They don't like what the Bible says about something. They don't like what Scripture says about how they should live their lives.

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They have some issue that they have a different opinion on, homosexuality, women in leadership, other types of sexual sin, abortion, whatever it is.

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Or maybe they just want to live in a way that's contrary to Scripture. So there's no reasoning with them or changing their minds because they're just looking for a reason to leave the church.

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And if they can pick two verses that show how the Bible contradicts itself, excuse me, then that invalidates all of it and it gives them a reason to walk away from the church.

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And they can feel good about the decision that they made because Scripture doesn't make sense. But when it comes to people that walk away from the church, there are other people.

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There are people that have been legitimately hurt by the church. Now here,

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I have to make another qualification. Understand that a lot of times when people say they've been hurt by the church, this translates to,

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I wanted to sin in a certain way and the church called me out on it. Or I wanted to live in a certain way that's unbiblical and the church said that I can't do that and be a member.

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Well, then they say they're hurt by a church. But I don't want to downplay the fact that there are people who have experienced true abuse in the church, true physical abuse, true mental abuse, true spiritual or emotional abuse.

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And those people have trouble trusting God or the Bible as well. And then there's another group of people that have walked away from the church that have deconstructed for some reason.

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And that's people who never got a good answer to their question about stuff like this. That's people that legitimately wanted to know at some point, how do we reconcile these things?

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But they never had those questions answered. The pastor just said or their parent just said, well, the

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Bible says it so it's true. And again, that is true, right? But it's not a sufficient answer for people that are really questioning with a true desire to understand.

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And that's why we spend a lot of time on this, for an example.

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I mean, if we wanted a sermon to be 15 or 20 minutes, we could just say something simple like, well, the

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Bible says it, so it's true. And I always say to you, yes, it looks like those two verses contradict themselves, but the

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Bible can't contradict itself and move on. And we not talk about it anymore. And we could do that, but then you would have just a little bit of the

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Bible, just enough to feel like you did something, and your soul would still be rotting away because you're not actually getting the true meaning and you're not actually getting the nourishment from Scripture that we need.

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And you might even wind up in a place where you start to be skeptical of what this really means because you try to live in this way that is based on a surface interpretation of the

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Bible, and nothing goes right. And then you start to question it for yourself.

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Or even if you don't, you can't answer the questions that your friends have. When a co -worker comes to you, wants to know something about the

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Bible, you'll run the other way because you don't feel equipped to talk about it. Or what about your kids?

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What about, you know, kids have lots of questions, and they have these questions and we can't answer them.

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Well, they might reach a point in their lives and in their development where what you say is not good enough, so they might just disregard the whole thing.

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Because if you don't think it's important enough to learn, why should they? So that's the second option, is just to say forget it and walk away.

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But like I said, there's a third option. And the third option is to realize and acknowledge that Scripture is inerrant, and it's not possible for Scripture to contradict itself, and then to know that there must be some kind of context that we're missing, or there's a deeper meaning that we're not considering, and we go and look for it.

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And we do the work to try to understand what's actually going on. And that's why we spend so much time on Sunday morning doing this.

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So let's go back to the idea of being peacemakers. Peace is a theme that recurs throughout the entirety of the

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Bible. John MacArthur says that there are over 400 direct references to peace, and there's even more indirect references to peace.

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Look at the entire narrative of the Bible. The Bible starts with peace in the Garden of Eden, and then we have a lot in the

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Revelation. And again, peace is a common theme.

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Peace is a common desire throughout the Bible. People are constantly clamoring and craving peace and begging for peace.

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God is referred to as a God of peace. Romans 15 .33 says, Now may the

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God of peace be with you all. Second Corinthians 13 .11, Finally, brothers, rejoice, be restored, be comforted, be like -minded, live in peace, and the

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God of love and peace be with you all. And then Philippians 4 .9, The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the

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God of peace will be with you. So we see peace everywhere. We see references to peace.

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We see God called the God of peace. And then when we turn our eyes up from the

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Bible and look straight ahead of us, peace is one of the last things that we see in a lot of places.

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You know, a former president and current presidential candidate just got shot at. That's not particularly peaceful.

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So it's really challenging for us to reconcile what we see in the world with the idea of peace as it's in the

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Bible, because there's a very distinct lack of peace that we see. I mean, until recently, there's people here in this room that weren't even alive during the period of time where we weren't militarily involved in a declared conflict somewhere around the world, meaning our

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Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard were involved in a declared war or conflict.

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And even though that's not the case now, it's still not as though the world is peaceful, just because we're not necessarily in a war.

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Our military is still all over the place. And even if you don't think about our military, there's countries out there that are constantly at war with one another, whether we're involved or not.

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And we look at the political state of our country, that's not peaceful. Most of us, or hopefully not most of us, but a lot of us can't even claim that we experience peace in our own households, or in our families, or peace in our workplace, or peace with our finances, especially if you're the one that has to buy groceries, there's no peace in your finances there.

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And a lot of people struggle with mental and emotional and spiritual peace.

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We don't have peace with our past. We don't have peace with the things we've done or the things that are done to us. But we have

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Jesus here telling us that peacemakers are the ones that are blessed and that peacemakers are the ones that'll be called sons of God.

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So where does that leave us? If we don't even know what peace feels like right now, or it's hard to remember what peace looks like, what are we supposed to do?

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Well, I'll take this opportunity to highlight once again a recurring theme throughout the

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Beatitudes, and that is that while they are absolutely the standards that we're expected to live by as Christians, that we're supposed to guide our lives by as people who profess to follow

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Jesus Christ, they require a new heart.

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All of these things require the saving, the transforming power of the

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Holy Spirit through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. They require this in order for us to be able to live these things out.

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So the idea of being a peacemaker, it makes sense that it's hard to understand because it's not something that's gonna be inherent in anyone's personality.

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And it's not something that you will be able to accomplish apart from the power of the

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Holy Spirit in your life being changed by the work of Jesus on the cross.

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So if you think about what comes to mind when you think about a peacemaker, I would encourage you to draw a mental line from this idea of making peace just a couple of Beatitudes ago to where we talked about the idea of meekness.

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So again, we see how the Beatitudes just build on each other. They're sequential.

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They're not random. This really needs to happen before this can happen. We need to understand meekness before we can understand what it means to be a peacemaker.

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But even more important, we need to understand poverty of spirit, which is all the way back to the very first Beatitude, before we can get to any of these things.

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So what I wanna do is first start by considering the idea of peace and what it really means in this context and what it really means when we're looking at it through what

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Jesus was talking about. Because for us, if we just think about ourselves, peace can mean a few different things.

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It can mean on a global scale that we're not involved in a war. On a local level, it can mean that we don't have conflict in our house.

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We don't have conflict in our marriage or with our children or our parents or whoever it is that we tend to get into conflict with.

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Now, sometimes we try to bring peace just by ignoring conflict, right?

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We try to bring peace by pretending that nothing is wrong, but that's not actually peace.

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So when you just bury conflict, that's really nothing more than a truce at best, and it turns into a cold war at worst.

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You're not actively involved in conflict, you can still have conflict.

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Or maybe we try to bring about peace of mind by doing something. We try to bring about financial peace by reading a

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Dave Ramsey book, or spiritual peace by going through the motions of devotional stuff, like reading the

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Bible or reading a devotional book or praying. But the thing about all these ideas of peace is that this is us viewing peace from a materialistic perspective.

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And when I say materialistic perspective, I mean we're viewing peace as something that we can bring about, or we're viewing peace by our standard, not by the standard of Scripture or the standard of God.

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And this is similar to what the people listening to Jesus were doing as well. So ironically, as we talk about this, as I've said many, many times, the people, the

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Jews of this time specifically, they were expecting this warrior messiah to come. They were expecting this warrior messiah to bring peace to their financial lives, to their political lives.

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But they were expecting him to bring peace through military power. They were expecting him to bring peace through conflict and through the destruction of the people that they felt were oppressing them.

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And I keep going back to this because this is such a drastic contrast between what they wanted and what

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Jesus was giving them. And just to drive home how radical the

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Sermon on the Mount was, how shocking it was and unexpected, and I think it's the same for us too.

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We might be in a different situation, but it's equally challenging and radical for us as well.

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So they and we have all these superficial ideas about what peace is and how we can achieve it, but in reality, none of them ever actually work.

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These political solutions, taking some kind of action to bring about financial peace or to bring about peace in our house, they don't work because they never really address the true root of the issues.

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They never really address the thing that's actually causing the conflict. And specifically, what that is is the sinful nature of our hearts.

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So just ignoring something doesn't change your heart. So peace is far more than just the absence of conflict.

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In reality, what peace is is the presence of righteousness in a person.

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Peace is specifically, even more specifically, the righteousness of God. This is what happens when we step through the

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Beatitudes and that peace and that change that is required for that peace to have righteousness only comes from the

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Holy Spirit. So if we think about that, it shouldn't be any surprise that this

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Beatitude follows the Beatitude about being pure in heart. Because much like everything else, we can only bring about temporary peace or we can bring about peace with the wrong motives or without doing anything to resolve the conflict if we're doing it out of an impure heart or if we're doing it out of the wrong motives.

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And a lot of times, we try to bring peace about for our own purpose. We try to bring peace about by avoiding conflict because conflict is uncomfortable or it's unpleasant or it makes things difficult in our household.

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So really, what this comes down to is we're just kind of seeking our own rights.

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We're seeking our own dignity. We're seeking our own desires. But this is incompatible with what it means to be a true

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Christian. Because let's go back to that Beatitude about meekness.

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If you think about what we talked about when we talked about meekness, we said that the only thing worth standing up for is the righteousness of God.

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We're meek because on our own, we have nothing worth defending. We're meek because we realize the sinful nature of our hearts and we realize that any good thing that comes from us actually comes from God.

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We see that we're nothing more than sinners by nature and that our nature is offensive to God.

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So we really have no rights and we have no dignity and we have nothing that was not given to us by Jesus.

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So at best, the righteousness that we have is borrowed. Now, this becomes challenging too because as a

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Christian, accepting the fact that this borrowed righteousness doesn't automatically erase all our sinful desires and impulses is another thing that makes this challenging.

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So after our new birth, after the Holy Spirit, we still have this dual nature.

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Don't get me wrong. Our hearts have been changed. These are things that we can now start working towards.

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But there's still some of that old you left in there. So part of you is righteous and the other part is just disgraceful sin.

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And I would say this, if there's anything that we should hate, it's the sinful part of our nature. But we'll get to that in just a minute.

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I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. Why is all this stuff significant in the context of being a peacemaker?

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Well, let's consider one of the most obvious qualities of someone that we could all look at and we could all agree was a peacemaker.

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So this person, I would say, is someone that doesn't quarrel. It's someone that doesn't argue or start trouble about stuff.

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This is a person that's not concerned about winning every argument or anything like that.

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And this is where I want to get into the three areas of concern that a peacemaker has.

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So when we think of a peacemaker, these are the three areas that he's concerned with. These areas are himself, others, and God.

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Now we've got to pay attention because some of those areas aren't going to be quite as obvious and they don't look the same. So we'll start with himself.

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This first area of concern is a little deceiving and that's why I was saying to pay attention. When it comes to himself, the peacemaker has no concern for himself.

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That's not on the list of considerations when we're looking at a conflict.

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He may have gotten over being concerned with himself because he realizes that he has that dual nature, the redeemed part, but also the sin part.

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And he hates the sin part. The peacemaker knows what he truly deserves.

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And he also knows that through Jesus, God has given him far more than what he truly deserves.

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So because of this realization, all these kind of worldly concerns about our rights and our dignity or his rights and his dignity, they start to shrink.

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As God gets bigger, the concerns that we have about our own self and our own things that we think we deserve become far less significant.

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Luke 17 33 says, he who seeks to keep his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will preserve it.

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And that's what that verse is referring to. While this might be a bit of a shocking statement, again,

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I said, I think you should hate the natural part of your heart. You should hate what is in your heart that is left over from before the time that you were saved.

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And if you don't hate it, it's because you're trying to hold on to something.

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You're trying to hold on to something other than what

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God has given you. Your heart is divided. We talked about that last week. Purity of heart means your heart is undivided.

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First John 5 19 reminds us of this. We know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

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So if you are hanging on to something that is not of God, something that is of the world at the expense of the things of God, you're starting to toy with Satan.

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You're starting to think that you can just dip a toe into the world and into sin and keep it there and that God's not going to see it because everything else is over here and it doesn't work that way.

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And toying with Satan is a battle that you can't win on your own, first of all. Now you can resist the devil and he will flee from you, but you won't do that if you insist on keeping that toe or foot in the world or keeping that toe or foot in whatever it is that you're pursuing.

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And these are the things that cause us to be more concerned about ourselves.

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If we're more afraid of what we're going to lose here on this earth than what we're going to gain from God, we can't be a peacemaker.

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Now that's another thing that we will talk more about later though, because being a peacemaker doesn't mean that you just roll over and let anybody do whatever it is they want.

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That's not the point either. But the peacemaker is not primarily concerned with himself.

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So the second area that we talked about is others. And the peacemaker is concerned with others, but maybe not entirely in the way that you think.

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See, we already talked about the peacemaker recognizing his own sin, the peacemaker recognizing his own divided heart and understanding his own need to rely on God for his righteousness because there is no other righteousness.

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So this means that he's working hard. He's working to change the way that he views the world, the way he thinks about everything.

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He's doing Romans 12 too, being transformed by the renewing of the mind.

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So that means that he's trying to look at everything through a biblical lens or get everything through a biblical worldview.

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This includes not only himself, but other people as well. The peacemaker now sees that other people, people outside of this circle or outside of the church or wherever it is they are, the ones that are causing conflict are not enemies.

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They're not somebody that we're viewing with hatred or contempt because that hatred and contempt is reserved only for himself and for the sinful nature that's still there.

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But rather, you look at others with compassion and sympathy, the peacemaker understands that those people are currently consumed with their own sinful nature because they don't know the righteousness of God.

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And this conflict is coming out of something that really is to be pitied, a condition that's going to find this person condemned if nothing changes.

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So the concern for others is not that they get what they want.

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The concern for others is they get what they need because if we all are peacemakers and we all have experienced this change and we all experienced this righteousness, conflict is going to decline tremendously.

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So the peacemaker is concerned for others. And then the third thing is

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God. And this is the peacemaker's ultimate concern. Now the peacemaker is not concerned about God, he's not worried about God or hoping that God's okay up there or whatever.

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He's concerned that everybody knows the righteousness of God and everybody has learned what it is to experience the righteousness of God.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones says, The peacemaker has only one concern, and it is the glory of God among men.

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That was the Lord Jesus Christ's only concern. His one interest in life was not himself, but the glory of God.

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And the peacemaker is the man whose central concern is the glory of God and who spends his life trying to minister to that glory.

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See that's an important idea right there too, is spending your life trying to minister to that glory.

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And you are not ministering to the glory of God if you're just picking fights with people, especially people that aren't believers.

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Again, it doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of time with them necessarily. You don't have to immerse yourself in their world to understand it.

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That's kind of a dumb idea too. But you need to pray for them and figure out ways that you can help them to understand the glory of God and the righteousness of God.

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And again, this idea of God's glory and the righteousness of God is where the peacemaker gets the lack of concern for himself while still being concerned with others.

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And as we mentioned, Jesus provides us with the model of this. I want to turn to Philippians chapter two and look at verses one through 11 and see what they tell us about Jesus.

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Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the

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Spirit, if any affection and compassion, fulfill my joy that you think the same way by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose, doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another as more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

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Have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a slave by being made in the likeness of men.

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Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore, God also highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. So then what could we say are the characteristics of a peacemaker based on what we just read here?

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This is not only obviously describing Jesus, this is Paul telling the church at Philippi how they should be living their lives as a result of how

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Jesus lived his life. So while we could probably list a ton of things,

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I'll just go with four characteristics that we can list from this. So first, the peacemaker is humble, and this has been a constant recurring theme throughout the

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Beatitudes, so we probably don't need to spend a whole lot of time on this. But the peacemaker recognizes that his righteousness is from God alone and that no part was played in it by him.

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We see this, if we have any questions about how this looks, that Jesus, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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He humbled himself to do what God had him to do. The second thing, characteristic, is the peacemaker is quiet, and this doesn't mean that the peacemaker never speaks.

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We're not talking about the strong, silent, stoic type, someone who never shows their emotions and doesn't ever share anything that's going on or what they're thinking.

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But rather, the peacemaker is, as James tells us, quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, because the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

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So that's another thing to think about when you're involved in a conflict with somebody and somebody is doing something that is just absolutely wrong according to Scripture.

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You can get mad, but if you lash out at them in your anger, that's not necessarily achieving the righteousness of God.

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It just doesn't work that way. But even beyond this, the peacemaker also does not speak maliciously to people.

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The peacemaker doesn't gossip. The peacemaker does not say, well,

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I'm just an honest person. And when they say they're just an honest person, they mean that they can tell people insulting stuff just because it's true.

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So you're not saying stuff that may or may not be true just to hurt somebody, because you just have to speak your mind.

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But what the peacemaker does is speak words that are enlightening, speaks words that are uplifting, like Ephesians 4 .29,

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let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed so that it will give grace to those who hear.

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So the peacemaker is quiet. Number three, the peacemaker is positive.

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And this can obviously mean having a positive outlook on life, but it also means that they're actively looking for ways to create peace.

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They're taking positive action to look for ways to bring peace to a situation. Even when the peacemaker has been wronged, he takes a second to stop and realize that that person that's doing the wrong is trapped in their own sin, and we're already meek.

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So we understand that while we feel like there's something that we should be getting that we deserve here, we understand what we really deserve, and we understand that God's righteousness is far more than we deserve.

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But we have words about this in scripture as well. Proverbs 25, 21 and 22 says this, if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head and Yahweh will repay you.

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And that's also in Romans 12, verses 20 through 21. And then

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Paul ends that thought with this, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

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And this feels like absolute foolishness to us.

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Our sinful nature hates this idea, because again, there's just this idea that we're being taken advantage of, and it's not right.

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First Peter three, eight through nine says, and though you have not seen him, you love him, and though you do not see him now, but believe in him, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

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We focus on that, because we're thinking about humility, and what

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God has done for us, as opposed to what someone else has done to us. And that verse from first Peter three, eight through nine.

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Oh, wait, I might've read the wrong one. Oh, I did. Sorry about that. You got some bonus scripture today.

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Let's rewind to that idea, focusing on what God has done for you. It says, now to sum up, all of you be like -minded, sympathetic, brotherly, tenderhearted, and humble in spirit.

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Now we're making more sense. Not returning evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but giving a blessing instead, for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing.

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Like I said, that makes a lot more sense in our context. Sorry about that. And while it fits right in with this idea of being positive, and looking for ways to bring righteousness to a situation rather than conflict, do you know what the context of those verses is?

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Do you know what section it's in? It's instructions to wives and husbands.

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So talk about a place where conflict can exist. We have a whole section about how we have to be like -minded, sympathetic, brotherly, tenderhearted, and humble in spirit.

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Not returning evil for evil, or reviling. Because it's in our nature to do that to the people that we're supposed to love the most.

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The people that we have become one flesh with in God. So peacemaking, you can start it in your own home.

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You can start today. So number four, the fourth characteristic. The peacemaker is approachable.

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And I think this is sort of the sum characteristic of the other three that we just listed. Because a person who's humble, a person who's always looking to do something positive, and a person who's quiet, those are the people that everybody wants to be around.

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They don't necessarily want to be around the people that they know if they say the wrong thing, or even if they say it in the wrong way, that person's going to start a fight with them.

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Or, you know, just try to start conflict somehow. Because the person who is all of these things is going to be the person truly seeking the righteousness of God.

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And these are going to be, like I said, the people that others want to be around. These are going to be the people that people go to for help, for guidance, to get godly counsel, to get godly wisdom.

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So those are four characteristics of a peacemaker. And I realize that I haven't directly addressed the contradiction that we brought up earlier.

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How can Jesus call us to be peacemakers when he's saying he didn't come to bring peace?

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And this is where we have to draw a very important distinction. And there's a lot of nuance here.

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I'm not going to lie. This can be complicated. Because we have to draw this distinction.

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It's also related to meekness. So we mentioned earlier that true peace is more than the absence of conflict.

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It's also the presence of righteousness. So I said, being a peacemaker doesn't mean that you simply roll over and let anybody do anything that they want for any reason.

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Because that would be seeking peace at any price. That would be ignoring the conflict and hoping that it goes away.

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And that's something that we can't do. We can't just affirm sin or ignore sin just to keep the peace.

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Just so everybody will feel good. So they'll have that phony version of peace in their mind.

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Because godly peace requires righteousness. And righteousness requires the killing of sin.

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Because sin is the greatest enemy of peace that exists. Sin is the thing that causes all conflict when you get down to the bottom of it.

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It might be somebody's attitude. But the sin is where that's coming from.

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So now we've come full circle. Again, at the root of every conflict that exists, from the argument that you had with your wife or your husband, all the way up to World War III is sin.

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It's the sinful desires, it's the sinful lack of humility, and it's the lack of righteousness.

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And we know this because the reason we want to avoid confronting anyone's sin is because when they are confronted with sin, people usually have a negative reaction.

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They want to clap back at you. But if we think we're truly making peace by avoiding this, we're wrong.

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And that's in scripture as well. We'll get to Matthew chapter 18 a little later.

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It's all about how the church is supposed to deal with sin. Chapter 18 is all about church discipline.

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But again, thinking about the idea of ignoring it. Just think about it on a personal level.

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Do you avoid difficult conversations with people that you love so that you won't have a fight?

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I've done it. I know what that's like. And it provides a temporary, but it provides a false peace.

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And it's the same with sin. You avoid the conflict, but you don't address it at the root.

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So when Jesus said he came not to bring peace, but a sword, he meant that his goal was not peace at any cost.

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He meant that he was bringing peace through righteousness. And sometimes righteousness is painful.

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Sometimes helping others recognize righteousness is painful. We read this in Hebrews 12, 11.

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And all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

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And James 3, 17 says, And I get that it seems like an impossible thing to balance, right?

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It seems like something that we can't do to address sin, but be loving. But we have

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Jesus as an example here. We can look briefly at the story of the woman at the well.

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And the story of the woman at the well, this is one that people often use to justify sin.

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This is one that people use to justify bad behavior on the part of women.

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That's not the point of this story. John 4, 16 through 18. And that's just a small portion of that story.

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But what we see Jesus doing here is talking to this woman who he knows is living in sin.

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She's had all these husbands, and she's living now with another man who's not her husband. And what some of us want to do is go, you're an adulterer.

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You're going to hell because you can't live that way. Jesus recognizes the sin.

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She admits it. And he says, you have said this correctly. So Jesus does not ignore the fact that she's sinning.

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He acknowledges it, but he's not stoning her, for example. He's showing her who he is.

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He's tender with her while at the same time addressing the sin. And while none of us are

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Jesus, we can use this as a model. But again, it's something that you have to truly approach with humility, truly approach with the power of the

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Holy Spirit. Let's go back to the first beatitude again. If you haven't been transformed by the

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Holy Spirit and recognized your poverty of spirit, you cannot, you cannot confront someone else's sin with humility in a loving way, in a way that seeks to restore them to the righteousness of God, because you haven't done it yourself.

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But we are instructed to do this. Ephesians 4 .15 says, And on the topic of peacemakers are not expected to just roll over and take anything.

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Luke 22 .36 says this. This looks like another contradiction. should sell his garment and buy one.

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So there is a time to fight back, but it's not a time to fight back for your rights and what you want.

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There may be a time to fight back for the righteousness of God. And I'll go back to my friend that I talked about at the very beginning here.

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Of course, he doesn't want to go to court with this denomination. But what is he standing up for?

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Now, if he's just standing up for the fact that he wants to keep his building and he wants to keep his church and he wants to keep everything status quo, because that's easy.

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Well, that could be a sinful reason to go to court. But I do have faith in this person.

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And I believe that he is simply trying to protect his church. And it's the denomination that's doing the wrong thing in this case.

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So I would present the suggestion to you that he would not be sinning if they took him to court and he fought back.

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Because now somebody is attacking him to try to harm the church.

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So if he's fighting back for the righteousness of God, he is still a peacemaker. And he's fighting on behalf of the righteousness of God for the entire congregation of his church as well.

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So the last thing is this beatitude says they shall be called sons of God.

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And this is important too, because the life of a peacemaker looks so drastically different from the rest of the world and even a lot of the church.

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And it's through this difference. It's through the fact that somebody is behaving in a way that makes no sense to everybody else, that the world can tell who's been set apart as a son of God.

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If somebody wrongs you as a Christian and you come back and destroy them, you don't look like you've been set apart as a child of God.

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So you have to be careful. Again, this is all stuff that we have to do prayerfully and with a recognition of who we are and what has been given to us.

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And one final word on this. Peacemakers will not always experience peace in the world.

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Jesus was the ultimate peacemaker and we all know what happened to him. The world hated him.

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John 14, oh, he said, amen. I just got wrapped up. John 14, 27 says this, peace

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I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you, but do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.

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So the point is, as a child of God, you will be protected. As a son of God, you will be protected. Even if peacemaking costs you your earthly life, it costs you your earthly possessions, it costs you the worldly things that you love, your heavenly father is still shielding you from the wrath of hell.

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I'll leave you with Romans 5, one, which says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the only peace that ultimately matters. Please pray with me.

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Heavenly father, thank you for peace. God, we thank you for the opportunity to recognize who it is that we are and what you've done for us despite who we are.

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God, we thank you for the grace and the mercy that has been shown to you. As we continue to study your word and we continue to divide it rightly,

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I pray that the true meaning, whether it's the surface meaning or the deeper meaning or the contextual meaning, will become clear to us through the power of the

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Holy Spirit, God. We all acknowledge that it's only your word that changes us, and it's only through the work of the

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Holy Spirit that we can be saved. It's not something that I do. It's not something that we do through a class or a program, but it's something that we do through your word,

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God. So we thank you that you have brought peace to us. We thank you that you have offered peace to us and that we have the opportunity to accept it.

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Lord, we thank you for loving us and we thank you for sending Jesus for us. And it's in your name we pray, amen.