WWUTT 1931 Blessed are the Peacemakers (Matthew 5:9)

Matthew 5 -9 says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

What is the number one way we can bring peace to this crooked generation? By sharing the gospel when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the Word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Sermon on the Mount, we're still in the

Beatitudes, but we'll be finishing these up between today and tomorrow. Let me begin by reading through these eight

Beatitudes once again. This is Matthew 5 -3 -10 out of the

Legacy Standard Bible. People, hear the word of the Lord. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the lowly, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see

God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Verse 9 is where we are today. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Now remember this word blessed that's at the very beginning of each one of these Beatitudes. It's literally translated happy.

Happy is he who is merciful. Happy are the pure in heart. And most commentaries that you will read will say the word blessed translates that way.

But in application, the word more directly means approved. Approved is he who is a peacemaker.

Approved are the lowly. They are approved by God. And the example that I gave you regarding this is how a man will seek a father's approval to receive his daughter's hand in marriage.

What do you call that approval? You call it his blessing. So you see how blessing and approval are synonymous with one another.

And that person who is approved by God is certainly happy. But it's not enough for us to translate the word straight across.

We have to understand what the application is supposed to be here. Why is that man happy?

Because he's been approved by God. So approved are those. Blessed. That word blessed encompasses all of that.

Approval and happiness. Blessed is the man who is a peacemaker.

Now this goes with the last couple. Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the pure in heart. And now we have blessed are the peacemakers. These appear to be things that we do only with other people.

So consider the first four Beatitudes. We had blessed are the poor in spirit. This is a person who comes before God, acknowledging their humble estate, that they can't do any thing on their own.

It is God who gives it to them. I can't. I have nothing. I can do nothing without God.

He is poor in spirit. And what does he receive? He recognizes that he has nothing.

He gets everything. He'll receive the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. Verse four.

Blessed are those who mourn. What do they mourn over? Their sin, the way of this world.

They desire the kingdom and they will be comforted. Blessed are the lowly. Those who don't seek anyone's approval.

They're not doing to receive anything in return. They trust fully in the Lord. And then verse six.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Those first four

Beatitudes are all directed between man and God. It is a man putting his trust and his desires fully upon the

Lord. But these next four. So that's the first four Beatitudes. These next four have to do with man's relationship with man.

Blessed are the merciful. The one who shows mercy to others, has compassion on them, and will even invest in their relief.

The next one in verse eight. Blessed are the pure in heart. A person who is not led astray by this world, but again, trusts fully in God, seeks

Christ. Their intentions toward others are always good because they seek to please the

Lord and not man. So they're not trying to gain anything from anybody else. They are pure in heart.

And then blessed are the peacemakers. I'll come back to that one in a moment, since that's the verse we're looking at today.

Verse 10. Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, which we'll consider tomorrow.

And once again, there's a relation between man and man there. Who are we being persecuted by? We would be persecuted by the world.

So coming back to verse nine once again. As we notice in these last four Beatitudes, something about the relationship between man and man.

We have blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. So this is not a man making peace with God.

We can't do that anyway. There is no way for us to make peace with God. It is Christ who has made peace with God on our behalf.

And so we who are in Christ Jesus have peace with God. His judgment is no longer on us.

His wrath is not going to be poured out upon us. Rather, God showers on us blessing.

Blessed are. So we receive the blessing of God. We receive his love and his affections.

We have been adopted into his family as his sons and his daughters. So Christ has made peace between us and God.

And we receive all the benefits of that reconciliation when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.

So this specifically here in verse nine is not about a man making peace with God, but rather keeping peace between man and man.

Romans chapter 12, verse 17, never pay back evil for evil to anyone, respecting what is good in the sight of all men.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men, never taking out your own revenge.

Instead, leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the

Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. And if he is thirsty, give him a drink.

For in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

There's a peacemaker. Now this is not a common practice on the internet.

I don't know how much time you've spent on social media, but even among Christians, there seems to be an effort to want to goad other people.

You know what I mean? So posting things that's going to get a rise out of a particular sect of people, especially unbelievers.

Watch this, I'm going to say something that's going to make unbelievers incredibly mad. Well, that's not keeping the peace.

Now I'm not going to judge anybody's motives when they do that, because I certainly post things on social media that really get unbelievers fired up.

What's my intention in doing so? Am I trying to teach somebody? Am I trying to guide someone in this?

Am I directing them to Christ? Or am I just posting this? I'm just saying what

I'm saying, some controversial issue, because I want to get a rise out of a group of people and draw a bunch of attention to myself.

What's my motivation whenever I do these things? Lately, you might be aware that I had stirred up ire on social media when

I said something about a woman's attire. I've been saying things like, leggings are not outerwear, they're underwear, so wear a skirt over them.

Or that Christian women should not wear bikinis, they need to have more modest swim attire whenever they go to public pools or public beaches or things like that.

What was my motivation in saying those kinds of things? Well, the weather is changing, we're getting warmer out there, and clothes start coming off, particularly among American women.

They start wearing less and less clothes. Men need to be modest too, but this particular issue at this particular time of year tends to be directed more toward women.

So I'm calling women to modest apparel. First Timothy 2, she should be clothed in modesty and self -control.

Now there, where Paul talks about that in First Timothy 2, he's not necessarily talking about attire.

I mean, he is addressing attire, because a woman should not dress herself in such a way to call attention to herself, but rather she should be adorned with good works.

So not wearing clothes that capture the eye, whether that's a lot of clothes or not hardly any clothes, what she needs to clothe herself in is righteousness.

And in Proverbs 31, and I tend to believe that when Paul gives that instruction there in First Timothy 2, he's drawing from Proverbs 31, because it says there that dignity, she clothes herself in dignity, and that is her strength.

So I made some comments like this on social media. Boy, the liberals just blew up, and it got all kinds of attention from unbelievers talking about how my

God is imaginary and saying I need to mind my own business, and they called me a pervert for saying this.

For saying that women need to cover up, I'm being called a pervert. And yet they were bombarding me with lewd images in retaliation.

Yeah, you can't make this stuff up. Somehow I'm the pervert in the midst of all of that. Anyway, so whenever I posted this stuff, though, whether it was the what video

I did, and there were a couple of what videos that came out in the midst of that as well, I was always addressing

Christian women. The direction was always toward Christian women, and you can go back and see those posts and see that's exactly who

I was talking to. I was not addressing the mass population, although they also need to cover up, and they will stand before God as well if they lived lives of impurity.

Because once again, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Those who are impure and live in impurity will not see

God. So certainly in saying that, I might bring conviction upon a person who is not a believer that they would turn from their sin to the

Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. But these particular instructions I was directing toward Christian women, because unchristian women don't even know how to live by these things.

Their hearts are rebellious. They have turned away from God. They go to the world and live like the world instead of living as Christ wants us to live.

So I wasn't directing it at them. I was directing it at Christian women. And yet other people are incredibly incensed because I would suggest such a thing, that we actually have to be modest in our attire, that there is a nakedness that needs to be covered.

The Lord Jesus Christ even said in Revelation chapter 3, cover your shame and your nakedness that it may not be seen.

Now he's speaking there in a very spiritual sense, but that applies to us physically as well.

We are supposed to cover our nakedness. It belongs only to our spouse. Anyway, this is kind of delving more into the pure in heart aspect, which

I covered last week. That was verse 8. We're on peacemakers right now. What does this have to do with peacemakers?

Well, again, I wasn't doing this to cause a disruption. I really wasn't trying to make people mad and war against one another.

That wasn't my intention at all. That just happens because they love unrighteousness and they hate

Christ and his word. So the point here, again, being that we're not trying to stir people up.

We're not trying to make people mad. First Peter 3 .15 says, in your heart, set apart

Christ as holy, always being ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you.

Yet do this with gentleness and respect. And in 2 Timothy 2,

Paul there told Timothy that the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant repentance. So we are supposed to keep the peace with all.

Our desire, our intentions is not to stir people up and make people mad and then cause anger and rashness to come against us.

We would be causing them to sin if that were the case. Of course they're in sin because they don't follow

Christ. But if we're just trying to goad people so that they'll get angry at us, we're causing them to sin, far be it from us to do such a thing.

We should be declaring to them the gospel of Christ so that they will repent of their sin and believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ and live. So as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.

James chapter 3 tells us, where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and evil in every place.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruits, without doubting, without hypocrisy.

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

And so let us be peaceable. Let us be peacemakers.

Not like the man who's described in Proverbs 26, 17, like one who seizes a dog by the ears is he who passes by and becomes passionate about strife not belonging to him.

What happens if you grab a random dog by the ears? Well, you make him mad. That's not who we're supposed to be.

We're supposed to speak words that bring peace. We're not trying to encourage people toward anger, to stir up strife and conflict.

That's not what we're about. We are peacemakers, not just peaceful, not just peaceable, but we are peacemakers.

We're making peace. Now another way that we do this, another way that this is understood, and perhaps the best way that we bring peace, in fact, this is the number one application of this, blessed are the peacemakers.

We share the gospel of Christ. That is the number one way we bring peace to others.

We share the gospel of Christ. Because as said in Titus 3, before we come to Christ, we are hated by others and hating one another.

We're in a continuous, constant state of strife. Every man who is not in Christ is constantly striving against every other man.

There is conflict between himself and others and himself and God. And so the way you bring peace into that man's life is you share the gospel with him.

And he is reconciled. Through faith in Christ, he's not only reconciled with God. He is reconciled with others.

The gospel of Christ reconciles us to God and to God's people. And the apostle

Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, that we've been given the ministry of reconciliation. All these things are from God.

This is 2 Corinthians 5 .18. All these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

Namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them.

And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation. So then we are ambassadors for Christ.

As God is pleading through us, we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

And the number one way we bring peace is by sharing the gospel. Now once again, like I said in the beginning, we cannot reconcile a man to God.

God is the one who does that work. But we can bring the message of reconciliation that by hearing the gospel, a man would be convicted over his sin and turn from it to Christ and so be reconciled to God, bringing peace into his life between himself and God and peace between himself and others.

It is the number one way we are peacemakers. And it is said of us who make peace that we shall be called the sons of God.

This is mentioned in Hosea 1 .10. The number of the sons of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

And it will be in the place where it is said to them, you are not my people. It will be said to them, you are the sons of the living

God. So before we came to Christ, we were not God's people. But now in Christ, we have become sons of the living

God. We've been adopted into the family of God and been made his sons and daughters. Therefore, we are called sons of God.

And by the way, I'm not just drawing that out of Hosea 1 .10 and giving that application on my own.

That very passage is cited in Romans 9 .26 and says that it applies to us.

Hosea 1 .10, which very clearly is talking about Israel, Paul applies to the church in Romans 9 .26,

even us, whom he also called not from among the Jews only, but also from among the

Gentiles. As he says also in Hosea, I will call those who were not my people, my people, and her who was not beloved, beloved.

And it shall be that in that place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they shall be called sons of the living

God. What have I been saying all this time? That the church is Israel and Israel is the church.

Anyway, that's beside the point, but just making that point while we are right here saying that we who are the children of God, who have been adopted into the family of God through faith in Christ, are peacemakers, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Isaiah 52 .7, how lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who proclaims good news, who announces peace and proclaims good news of good things, who announces salvation and says to Zion, your

God reigns. Let's finish there with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the peace you have brought to us through Christ our

Savior. We were once haters of God. We were rebellious against God, going our own way.

We deserve judgment. But you have made peace by sending your son

Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the grave so that whoever believes in him will not perish, is no longer at enmity with God.

But we've been reconciled to God through faith in Christ. As you have brought peace to us, teach us to be peacemakers with others.

We don't strive against the world as though we were trying to do battle with them, but we bring peace.

As Paul says, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of darkness that we cannot see.

We bring the message of peace to the world through the declaration of the gospel of Christ. And may we be peacemakers in that process that you may grant repentance.

We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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