Untitled Sermon (4)

·       Open up your Bibles with me this evening to Matthew 5.

·       And we are specifically looking at Matthew 5 verse 9.

·       Read.

·       Pray.

·       When I was in college I played the djimbe in our worship band at church.

·       There was a time when we received an invitation to another church to come and play for a worship night they were having.

·       They didn’t give us a lot of information, they just said they had invited several churches and we were going to come and take turns leading in worship.

·       We accepted the invitation without asking a lot of questions, which was a lesson learned.

·       When we got to the worship night we quickly realized there was an agenda beyond just worshipping together.

·       They had a guest speaker, and he was a pacifist.

·       We discovered we were not just at a worship night, we were at a small peace rally the church decided to host.

·       They just didn’t disclose that information in an effort to get more people to come.

·       Throughout the night the argument was made that God is a God of Peace.

·       And therefore all war is always wrong.

·       They didn’t argue that if it is possible as much as it depends on us to live peacably with all men, as it says in Romans 12:18.

·       They argued that we should always be at peace with all people.

·       They said there was always a way to live a life of peace and pacifism.

·       And every verse that delt with peace in the Bible, they argued was evidence of this being the way.

·       They especially delt with this verse here in Matthew 5:9.

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

·       But is that really what this is saying?

·       Does being a peacemaker equal pacificism?

·       Does peace really mean no conflict?

·       To really understand what it means to be a peacemaker, we first need to understand what peace is.

·       So what is peace?

·       The Hebrew term is a word you have likely heard.

·       Shalom.

·       Literally translated Shalom is a tranquility or wholeness.

·       And it is almost always referenced in the Bible as a state of love and loyalty with God and with one another.

·       We were created to be at peace with Him and ultimately we were created to be at peace with each other.

·       God is a God of peace.

·       Romans 15:33 says “Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.”

·       And 1 Corinthians 14:33 says “For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.”

·       And Jesus is the Prince of Peace according to Isaiah 9.

·       God does intend for us to be at peace.

·       But it doesn’t take more than a few minutes spent on social media to realize that we live in a world that does not know peace.

·       First of all, people are not at peace with themselves.

·       We live in an age of depression and anxiety.

·       There is a void within each and every one of us without God.

·       And we seek to fill that void with anything that we can find.

·       We seek happiness in all of the wrong places.

·       There is a battle happening inside of us.

·       And it’s a battle of the flesh.

·       A battle of our sinful desires.

·       And people seek to fill this void and calm this battle with all the things of the world.

·       People seek to fill this void with money.

·       With power.

·       With relationships.

·       With material possessions.

·       With alcohol and other substances.

·       And all it does is cause the void to grow deeper.

·       And they battle within themselves.

·       This is why we live in a society that more than ever before is marked by depression and anxiety.

·       People cannot accept themselves.

·       We constantly compare ourselves to others to see how we match up.

·       We spin our wheels trying to keep up with the jones’s.

·       And then find discontentment at the end of every trail.

·       And then get down on ourselves when we’re not what we want to be.

·       This is the human condition.

·       We are not at peace within ourselves.

·       But because we are not at peace with ourselves, we cannot be at peace with anyone else.

·       People are not at peace with each other.

·       We’re constantly at war.

·       There’s always a battle being fought somewhere.

·       We battle within our families.

·       We battle economically.

·       We battle politically.

·       We battle between the races.

·       We battle between religions.

·       We battle between denominations.

·       And man let’s be honest, we’re Baptists, we do plenty of battling within our own denomination.

·       But friends this is not what God intended.

·       And the reason we battle with ourselves.

·       And the reason we battle with each other.

·       Is because we battle against God almighty.

·       God created us to be with Him.

·       But sin entered the world and caused all of this brokenness.

·       Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

·       And Romans 6:23 the wages of that sin is death.

·       God created you to be with Him.

·       He created you to have peace and live abundantly.

·       But the day that sin entered the world, is the day we messed that up.

·       Our choice to sin results in separation from God.

·       Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”

·       To be separated from God is to be separated from peace.

·       Because of sin, we do not have peace.

·       We can never have peace within ourselves.

·       And we can never find peace with each other until we first find peace with God.

·       So, how then do we have peace with God?

·       Through the Good news of Jesus Christ.

·       See, to deliver good news, you first have to deliver the bad news.

·       And the bad news is that we are not at peace.

·       The bad news is that we are searching to fill a void in the darkness that we can never fill.

·       And all that does is cause division among us.

·       It causes wars, confusion and pain for everyone.

·       But we don’t serve a God of confusion.

·       1 Corinthians 14:33 God is not the author of confusion but of peace.

·       And that’s the good news.

·       This is the news that outshines the bad news.

·       Romans 5:1 “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

·       There is hope in Jesus Christ.

·       There is nothing we can do to make peace.

·       We can’t buy peace.

·       We can’t achieve peace through war.

·       We can’t compromise our way to peace.

·       True peace is only achieved through the blood of the cross.

·       Colossians 1:19-20 “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

·       God looked down from heaven and He saw our condition.

·       And rather than leaving us to our devices in this crooked and broken world He did something about it.

·       He sent Jesus Christ to live the life we could not live.

·       And to die the death that we earned.

·       Romans 5:8 “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

·       God loves you.

·       He created you to have peace.

·       And he provided the way for you to have peace.

·       You have peace through Christ when you call on His name.

·       Romans 10:9 “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

·       Have you found this peace in your life?

·       Or are you still fighting an inner battle of turmoil?

·       Give your life to the Lord.

·       Call on the name of Jesus and receive the peace that God intended when He created you.

·       Now listen, we’re bringing this back around.

·       We’ve seen what it means to have peace.

·       And we’ve seen why we don’t have peace.

·       Lets look now at what it means to be a peacemaker.

·       Because Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.”

·       If you have placed your trust in the Lord and called on His name to be saved.

·       Then you are a disciple of Jesus Christ.

·       And a disciple of Jesus Christ is a natural Peacemaker.

·       Does this mean you will never have conflict?

·       Does this mean we will never see war?

·       Absolutely not.

·       Jesus himself said in Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.”

·       Jesus was the Prince of Peace and yet he saw conflict.

·       The message of the gospel that Jesus brought was what got Him crucified.

·       You will not go through life as a Christian and be able to avoid conflict.

·       There will be people who are offended by your message.

·       One of my favorite events we do is on Good Friday.

·       We hold the white crosses out along the road as a reminder to those who pass by that we celebrate Easter because of the cross.

·       And I love how people drive by and they honk their horns and they wave and they yell.

·       And a lot of people are excited to see the message of the cross.

·       But we’ve also had people yell at us in anger.

·       Every year there is at least one person who drives by and thinks they are being original when they make crude hand gestures at us.

·       And one year there was a guy who drove by a couple times flashing devil horns at us and yelling “Hail Satan.”

·       The message of the cross is offensive.

·       You are telling people they are sinners.

·       You are telling people they are not Lord.

·       They are not in charge.

·       And not everyone wants to hear that message.

·       And that message will not always be met with peace.

·       The very next verse in Matthew refers to persecution for righteousness' sake.

·       Being a peacemaker does not mean avoiding conflict.

·       In fact, the only way to avoid conflict is to compromise.

·       The only way to keep from upsetting those who don’t want to hear this message is to stop sharing it.

·       It is to stop telling people that Jesus is Lord.

·       It is to stop telling people to repent.

·       And that is not an option.

·       This is a message that must be shared.

·       You can have peace, in Jesus Christ.

·       So to be a peacemaker means to share the message that brings people peace.

·       You are a peacemaker because you are a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

·       And the message that you are bringing to people is a message of salvation.

·       A message of hope.

·       And a message of Peace.

·       One of my favorite tracts that I use is called “Steps to Peace with God.”

·       I once made a hospital visit to an older gentleman who was in his final days.

·       I asked Him if he had peace with God.

·       If he had a relationship with Jesus.

·       And his answer was “I thought I did.” And I could tell that it was bothering him, he didn’t have peace.

·       So I shared with him, that he didn’t have to think or hope that he had a relationship with God.

·       And I took him through that tract.

·       And shared the hope and the peace that God offers us through Jesus Christ.

·       When I finished taking him through that tract he prayed with me to receive Christ.

·       And his whole demeanor changed.

·       His health quickly deteriorated but his family said that as they visited him in those final days that he spoke of our visit and he seemed to have a different outlook.

·       He knew He had hope.

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

·       This man knew, that He had become a child of God.

·       Do you have this peace?

·       Are you a child of God?

·       Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you know Jesus?

·       Call on the Lord Jesus Christ tonight, and you will be saved.

·       As we wrap up tonight, I’ll be here, and I would love to talk to you about what it looks like to truly know Jesus.

·       And if you are saved.

·       If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, then remember tonight that you are a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

·       You are a peacemaker.

·       Take this message with you wherever you go, and share it.