Fruitful Marriages Make Peaceful Homes

Introduction

The famous Anglican Bishop J.C. Ryle said that “peace without truth is a false peace” and today we are going to confront this idea of false peace head on.

Here’s my belief, God wants to eliminate the false peace that exists in most of our homes and bring a true peace to them.

If you are visiting or just joining us, we are in the midst of a series called “A Fruitful Marriage”, where we are looking at how being filled with the Spirit creates fruit in our lives and therefore fruit in our marriages.

Fruitful people create fruitful marriages

We’ve talked about love and joy in the past two weeks and our foundation for the series is that marriage, according to the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5, represents the gospel. Marriage is the gospel lived out. As husbands lay down their lives for their wives and wives respect their husbands, we see a beautiful picture of the gospel in action.

Today we are going to tackle what may be one of the most difficult subjects in marriage and that is the ideal of a peaceful home.

As I’ve said before, regardless of whether you are married, divorced, widowed or single as a Pringle, this series is for you. We are looking specifically at marriage, but these ideas and concepts carry over into all of your relationships. We are to love our neighbor as ourself, Jesus says. That’s a lofty idea and one that we should all be striving for, so today, as we read our text, I pray that you will be open to hearing what the Lord says to you.

Ephesians 4:1–3 ESV

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Our main text for the past few weeks has been in Ephesians 5, but today, I wanted to go back further into the context of this wonderful letter the apostle wrote to the church in Ephesus. Our passage today could be labeled as the main theme of this book - unity in the church.

The Apostle is writing to the Ephesians and his goal for them is that they would be able to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Unity and peace are the theme for the letter. So when he gets to Ephesians 5 and he starts talking about relationships between Husbands and Wives, Parents and Children, this is the basis for that idea. We all want peaceful home. We want to be unified.

Matthew 5:9 ESV

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

Jesus tells us that our own identity should be that of a peacemaker. Jesus exalted peacemakers and explained that those who make peace would be called the Sons of God. In other words, we would call them Christians. Christians are to be peacemakers. Now you may not see yourself in that way, but if you are a child of God, that is what you should be aiming toward, being someone who makes peace.

With that thought, I want to point out something rather obvious here, in order for you to make peace, there first has to be conflict. In order to have peace, we have to have to recognize that there is conflict. Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, not “blessed are those that have peace” or “blessed are those that want peace” or “blessed are those that enjoy peace”, he says “blessed are are the peacemakers.”

Peacemakers Engage In Conflict

You cannot be a peacemaker unless you are willing to engage in conflict. That’s a simple fact. If you want to make peace, you first have to engage in conflict. And for most of us that means we are going to have to have the revelation that our homes are living under a false peace, not a real peace.

Peace in the Bible is a central theme found throughout the Old and New Testament. In fact, one of the identities of God is peace. Jesus in the famous prophecy read around Christmas every year in Isaiah 9, where we have written on our cards, and he shall be called, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of ? Peace!

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, he rules over it, he reigns from a place of peace. Why is that? We first have to realize that Jesus engaged in conflict. Now the conflict he engaged in was the warfare for our very souls. We were lost in our sin, at war with God. We were his adversaries. We had sinned against him and we were at war with him, yet God in his great love for us, sent forth his son to die for us. And by the time we get to Isaiah 53, what does it say?

Isaiah 53:5 ESV

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

The death of Jesus brings us peace. Jesus is the ultimate peacemaker. He makes peace, not by avoiding the conflict, but by engaging in it. He inserts himself in the middle of the conflict. He eradicates false peace and brings us true peace. If you are saved, you are living with true peace in your heart between you and God. If you are not saved, I want you to know that peace today. Please put your trust in Him today. He died for your sins, your faults your failures, your mistakes. He rose again on the third day and that secured for you a new life in Him. Don’t delay, get yourself right with God today. That’s true peace.

Sadly most of our homes though, are filled with a false peace.

What does false peace look like?

False peace is seeing a problem in your relationships and not saying anything.

False peace is avoiding conflict in order to maintain a semblance of peace.

False peace is lying about what is really going on in your marriage or family and in your heart so that you don’t upset your spouse or family member.

If there are subjects you can’t discuss in your home, that’s a false peace.

If there are issues that you don’t dare bring up, that’s a false peace.

If you are living like this, It’s not a real peace. It’s fake. Because as soon as those thoughts, feelings or emotions are brought up, war breaks out. Tell me I’m wrong. You know that is truth. Back to the quote I opened with by J.C. Ryle, peace without truth is a false peace.

Jesus came to disrupt false peace. The man that said, blessed are the peacemakers, later on in the book of Matthew says this…

Matthew 10:34–36 ESV

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Jesus did not come to create a false peace. He’s saying that he came to disrupt the false peace in our families. He’s not the God of “Can’t We All Just Get Along.” If you follow Jesus, it’s going to create problems in your own family, that’s what He is saying in this passage. He is the God who disrupts our false peace so that we can enter into true peace. True peace only comes from God. It is a fruit of the Spirit-filled life. We enter into true peace by being filled by the Spirit, walking with the Spirit and being led by the Spirit. That’s where true peace comes from and most of us settle for false peace.

Why do we settle for false peace rather than seeking true peace? I think a lot of it comes down to the family we grew up in. Our parents or grandparents or whomever raised us modeled for us conflict resolution or the lack thereof. Here are four bad ways that we learned to deal with conflict that now we need to unlearn.

Avoid

Appease

Argue

Accuse

1. Avoid - I think a lot of us learned this method of conflict resolution. We learned the old saying of “just keep your head down”. Perhaps the home you grew up in was a place where everyone lived in fear because dad or mom or both had a short fuse. Anything you said could turn into an explosive moment where your life was in danger, so you learned rather quickly the best way to handle conflict was to avoid it.

If you learned this as a child, chances are you have brought this into your marriage whether your spouse is an angry person or not. Anytime conflict arises, you feel sick to your stomach and your number one goal is to avoid it at all costs. You run and hide in your room. You refuse to talk. You shut down. You avoid conflict.

2. Appease - The second main way I’ve seen people deal with conflict is through what you might call people-pleasing. You don’t engage in conflict, you try to smooth it over. Rather than expressing what you really feel, you are the person who gets run over and are constantly hurt, but you refuse to say anything because you don’t want to upset anyone.

People who appease spend most of their life living in a place of false peace. It’s a false peace because they are not truthful to how they are actually feeling. This typically happens in marriages and relationships where one person is really controlling. In order to maintain this false peace, you have to appease that person. Whatever they want, they get. You placate them in order to maintain this false peace.

3. Argue - Some of you don’t avoid conflict, you readily engage in it because you love to argue. You look for reasons to argue. You don’t have a false peace in your house, you have no peace! This is also typically a learned behavior, we see our father or mother constantly badgering their spouse into a pseudo-submission and we think that is the way that we are to engage in conflict resolution. We beat them with our words into agreement with us. Peace only lasts until the next argument.

4. Accuse - Lots of us when we enter a conflict, we like to play the Blame Game. Rather than taking ownership or responsibility, it’s just so much easier to blame your spouse, right? I wouldn’t have blamed Autumn if she hadn’t blamed me first. This method of conflict resolution is as old as the garden. Adam says, Lord it was that woman you gave me that caused me to eat the apple.

There are many other ways that we do a poor job of handling conflict like silent treatments, beating around the bush, not truly listening and so on. And I’m only naming the ones that I know that I’ve used when dealing with conflict. I could spend hours just on this subject, but I want to get into what it takes to create a truly peaceful home.

Godly Marriage Requires Peacemakers Not Peacekeepers

Jesus says that peacemakers are the sons or daughters of God, not peacekeepers. God isn’t expecting us to keep the peace, he’s expecting us to make peace. Why is that? Because he knows there will be conflict. He knows that in our marriage, family, friendships, work, we will face conflict and our job is not to appease or avoid that conflict, but to make peace in the midst of that conflict.

So what makes for a good peacemaker? Here are the top things that I thought of when studying this…

Peacemakers Have An Inner Peace

Peacemakers Are Slow To Speak & Quick To Listen

Peacemakers Are Honest

Peacemakers Seek Unity

Peacemakers Have An Inner Peace - First and foremost you have to have a deep peace inside of you and like we said earlier, true peace always comes from God. You first need to be reconciled and at peace with God. If you are here today and you don’t know Jesus as savior, today is the day of salvation. I want you to know this peace. If that’s you, don’t leave here today without talking to me and making that decision to give yourself fully to Jesus and be filled with his Spirit and with peace. For those of us that are saved, we need to live from a place of inner peace. That means we need to approach relationships from a solid foundation of prayer and rest. If we are anxious, if we are full of stress or if we are having trouble just “peopling” that will inject unneeded stress into our marriage. We need to have inner peace. You cannot give away something you don’t have. So if you don’t have peace, you can’t give that to your spouse. And we are meant to give away peace.

Peacemakers Are Slow To Speak And Quick To Listen - One of the biggest issues I’ve seen with people in marriage is this one. We assume we know what our spouse is going to say so we fill in the gaps of their conversation and we don’t allow them to fully express themselves. For a lot of us we feel compelled to “fix” the other person, rather than just allowing them to vent. In marriage you should be slow to speak in the midst of a conflict. I’m not endorsing the silent treatment, far from it. Listening is a skill. You need to work that muscle. You need to focus on what your spouse is saying and allow them ample room to explain themselves. Listening requires you to ask good and thoughtful questions.

Peacemakers Are Honest - One of the hardest things for most people to do is to honestly express their feelings in a way that is truthful and not hurtful. There’s a fine line between being accusatory and honest. There’s a fine line between being argumentative and open about issues. Peacemakers can discern between the two. Peacemakers are direct but when you speak to them, you know they care. Peacemakers won’t beat around the bush, but they won’t be harsh.

What then is a peacemaker like? To begin with, he is characterized by honesty.

R. Kent Hughes - Prof of Theo at Westminster Theological Seminary

Peacemakers are characterized, or they are known by their honesty. As Christians, that should be one of the marks of who we are, regardless of whether we are married or not. Obviously all of our relationships will benefit by us being honest. Again, not in harsh way but in a loving, kind and compassionate way. Without honesty, we live in a place of false peace, like we said earlier.

4. Peacemakers Seek Unity - People who engage in peace making need to have a certain level of discernment. We don’t want to be argumentative or accusatory. We want to be those that seek unity in the bond of peace.So that means we have to be wise when it comes to engaging in conflict. We can’t just go around starting fights. That’s not the point. The point is we need to have solutions to conflict as well. In other words, we don’t start fights just to fight. And this is a big one, we need to recognize that just because we see something is wrong in our relationship doesn’t mean it’s the other’s fault. Peacemakers will see their own contributions to the problem and seek to fix those first. What am I doing that is causing this conflict? I’m going to own that and fix that first. In order to have true unity, you have to have two people who agree on the problem and own their contributions to the problem and both are set on fixing the problem. Peacemakers seek that sort of unity.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Are you a peacemaker or a peacekeeper? Are you one who is seeking to engage in conflict or do you avoid it? Are you just trying to get everyone to just get along or are you actively trying to bring true unity and peace into your relationships. Remember this, you cannot control other people and how they respond. Specifically, you can’t control your spouse and how they will respond when you try to engage with them in conflict.

For some of you, living under a false peace might be preferable to the alternative. You might be thinking, at least under this false peace, I feel safe or secure. I get it. But Jesus does want you to have true peace and the only way to get to that true peace is to be like him and disturb the false peace.

Today I want to end with some prayer and journaling points. I will give you a few minutes to pray through these and then we will end with prayer and I will be available after the service to pray with you or to just listen if that’s what you need.

Prayer Points

Father, where in my life am I just keeping the peace? How can I make peace in that area?

Lord, in what areas am I not listening to you, my friends or my spouse?

Jesus, how can I better walk in your peace today?