Matthew 5 (Part 7) :9

We are in chapter 5, beginning of verse 1. You guys should know this passage by now, right? This is about the seventh or eighth time that we've actually read through these verses as we go through the Beatitudes. And the Beatitudes, as we've discovered here in our study of Matthew chapter 5, are a progression. They show a progression of Christian growth. It begins in verse 1 by saying, when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside, sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them, saying, and then the first Beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You'll remember, poor in spirit is all about recognizing the depravity of my heart. It's looking into my heart and seeing the darkness, the hopelessness of my spiritual condition, recognizing that I'm lost without Christ and I need him. I'm totally without hope. I'm bankrupt in and of myself. Sounds like a really nasty thing to come to terms with, but Jesus pronounces a blessed condition upon that revelation, that understanding, because it is from that point that we begin. We all begin our Christian walk, right there, you guys, by just saying, I'm a sinner and I need God and I have nothing. I have empty hands as I approach God. And then he says, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. You'll remember that's the next step in our growth in Christ. We mourn over our sin. We have sorrow in our heart for those lost opportunities and situations that have now passed us by because of our sinful condition, our sinful behavior, relationships, opportunities, and so forth that are now that are gone. There's a time of mourning. There's a time of grieving over our sin. But Jesus pronounces a blessed condition for those who mourn over their sin. He says, and comfort will come into your life when you do that. Next, he says, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. You remember that's our next stop on the stairway of growing in Christ. We've seen our sin. We've mourned over it. And now we have a whole different picture of who we are. We're not pretending to be something we're not. We're not seeing ourselves as more than we really are, or even less than we really are. We're seeing ourselves now as God would have us to see ourselves. We're not terribly impressed, but we know God loves us anyway. And we begin to see other people differently too. I see you just like I see myself as a sinner in need of Christ. I don't look up to you too much, nor do I look down on you. Because I understand now that we're all together in sin and under condemnation apart from Christ. That changes the whole way I see you and how I see myself. Meekness is the result of that. That's what meekness is. It's really a wonderful thing that begins to happen in a born-again Christian's life, to see themselves as they really are, not to longer take themselves so seriously. Verse 6, he said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. This is the next thing that we discover on our journey of getting to know God and walking with Him. We begin to realize that now what we used to put into our hearts no longer satisfies. Remember we sang that song this morning, I am satisfied in you. Well, before we met Christ, we tried to fill our heart with all kinds of other things, right? But now we're realizing, we've realized that Christ, it's only you who's really going to fill my heart in any kind of a satisfying way. And I want more of you. In fact, I'm hungering, I'm thirsting for more of what the Lord has for me. All of a sudden, you know, some of your friends come up to you and they're like, dude, what happened to you? You're like, weird. I mean, we used to go out and party on Friday and Saturday nights and you like want to go to Bible studies. Is that what I'm hearing here? And you're reading your Bible all the time now, and you always want to talk about God. What's up with that? Well, it's a hunger and a thirst that has now taken hold of our hearts because we've recognized our sinful condition. We've mourned over it. We've seen ourselves as we really are. Now we long for the things of the Lord. You see, when you realize how bankrupt the world is, well, how bankrupt you are spiritually, and then how bankrupt the world is, you stop wanting what the world has to offer, you know? All of the things that the world presents as reasons to live, you've realized are not reasons at all. And what you want is Jesus. You want more of him, more of his word. You want his truth in your lives. And you're tired of hearing opinions. You know, it's like I can get on the news anytime and I can read somebody's opinion. I'm sick to death of hearing about somebody's opinion that isn't based on any kind of reality. It's just their opinion. I want truth in my life. I want to know what's true, what I can depend on. You know, I'm hungry for those. I love to see that in a new believer's life. I just love it. They're like, I just want to know God. You know, I want to read my Bible all the time. And they write me, they email me notes during the week. Hey, pastor, I was reading this verse. What in the world is this all about? You know, and is that connected with such and such? Oh, I just love that. I love to hear that because they're hungry for God. They're hungry for his word. They're hungry to walk in the righteousness of the word. Jesus pronounces a blessed condition upon that person, says they'll be filled. He then goes on to say, blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. This is the next step in our growth because I realize that I'm a recipient of mercy, God's mercy. Now I am, I have a different attitude toward other people, you know, whereas I used to be really critical of other people, why don't you get your act together, you know, and we're pointing the finger at people and even comes out in the way we drive, you know, and other people do things in traffic, you know, that can still kind of, you know, get you a little bit miffed. But you have a different approach to it now because you realize this, this is just a person. This is a lost person that I'm dealing with here, you know, just like me. And I begin to realize that God has shown me such amazing mercy that I'm going to extend that to other people. Jesus, you know, that's just a part of growing in him, you know, I begin to do that. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God, you know, then we begin to, we begin to change the way we, we react and have a relationship. Our relationship with God is, remember, we talked about this purity, we talked about the fact that it talks about sincerity and genuineness in our relationship with God and man, purity, lack of pollutants, and so forth. Remember, I showed you that picture of a water filter, when we were going through that section. If you've, if you missed any of these Beatitudes, they're all available on our website, you just go to the website, click on the through the Bible studies, you can watch them on video or listen to them on mp3, but they're all there. If you missed any, I would encourage you to do it. Anyway, and then we come to the the Beatitude that we're looking at here this morning, and that is blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. This last Beatitude, which now is going to deal with growth, we're done after this Beatitude, we're no longer going to deal with growth Beatitudes, the next and the last Beatitude after this one is the response of the world to the growth that we've had in Christ, which is persecution. But this is the last growth element of growing up in Jesus, right? And it talks about being a peacemaker. Well, but there's, see, we got to, we got to be careful not to jump ahead here too quickly, because I could say to you, okay, go and be a peacemaker. First of all, we got to define what that is. But but but even before that, we have to understand or we have to, we have to make sure that we have the peace in our hearts. Because you can't give what you don't possess. Okay, so if you're going to be a peacemaker, and Jesus pronounces a blessed condition upon those who are peacemakers, you obviously have to know what that is. And you have to have it, you have to possess it, so you can give it away. Right. So that's what we're going to kind of look at here a little bit this morning. The peace that Jesus is talking about isn't peace kind of like, Oh, I'm just at such peace. Because that even can be a little bit of a deceptive thing. Jesus is talking specifically about the peace that results from no longer being estranged with God. Okay, that's the piece we're referring to. Do you guys remember before you met Jesus, how there was just this tension in your life? And you may be You didn't think of it as tension with God, you just kind of took it out on other people who wanted to walk with God, and you didn't like going to church, you hated going to church. When people talk about going to church, you're like, just leave me alone. I remember first five years that Sue and I were married, we did not go to church, even though she begged me to go to church. I didn't want to go to church. I hated church. I had been raised going to church every Sunday. It was boring with a capital B, and I thought that it was completely just unnecessary. But more than that, the reason I didn't want to go to church is because I sensed a division between me and God, because I was living my own life, doing my own thing, going my own way, living sin, you know, just out there in the open. And there was a separation between God and I, there was, you know what I'm saying? There was a chasm that was between us. I couldn't really articulate that. It just kind of came out in the way of just saying, I don't want to go to church. Leave me alone. Don't talk to me about God. I remember going through the channels. Do you remember doing that? Going through the channels on TV, and you're kind of like, okay, that's a nature show, and that's that, and oh, there's Telemundo, and you go through all the different things, and then you come to that channel where they're talking about Jesus, and you can't go fast enough, you know, sort of a thing. You want to get by that thing now, sort of a thing. Do you know what's going on there, guys? There's an estrangement. There's a separation between you and God. But when we come to Christ, and we receive forgiveness for our sins, that estrangement goes away. That division, that separation, that coldness that was there has now, you know, come together, and that produces joy and peace. In our lives, because I'm no longer estranged from God, that tension that used to be there is no longer there, and so forth. The Apostle Paul wrote about this to the church in Rome. I'll put it on the screen for you. It says, therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let's turn this verse completely around. We'll start it off by saying, we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't that fun? But we can't leave out why. It's because we've been justified through faith. We have been justified. We've been forgiven. We've been cleansed. We've been washed of our sin. That's why we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, all right? Do you guys remember that bumper sticker? I couldn't find a copy of it, so I just wrote the words on the screen. You remember seeing this one where it says, know God, and then you can know peace. But if you have no God in your life, then you have no peace in your life. I really like it because it really says in a very accurate sort of a way how we have peace with God. It's by knowing him and knowing his forgiveness. You know, obviously a bumper sticker doesn't tell the whole gospel story, but it's kind of a good thing to kind of get us there. Well, what generates that peace in our lives? What is the key to having peace? Do you guys remember when the Apostle Paul was writing the majority of his letters in the New Testament, he would begin most of them with the twin blessings of grace and peace. Do you remember that? He'd start off and say, you know, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, da-da-da-da-da, grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus Christ, and so on and so on. But did you ever notice he always said grace and peace, and it was never inverted? He was never peace and grace. Grace and peace, why? Because peace is an outgrowth of grace. When you come to terms with the grace of God, then you have peace. Now, what is grace? Grace is God's love, acceptance, blessing in my life that has nothing to do with me earning it, okay? And when I realize that God's love for me is not predicated upon what I have earned, but simply what he has given, that produces peace. Now, the opposite of walking in the grace of God are the people in this world, some even who may even be in this room, who have a relationship with God based upon performance. It's funny, you know, I talk about this quite a bit, but I had another brother in the Lord who's come here for probably almost 18, 19 years, who just kind of came up to me after the service and said, you know, I still struggle with being in a performance sort of a relationship with God. And a performance relationship basically means this. I'm going to live the, I'm going to try to live the good Christian life. And as a result, God is going to love me, accept me, and bless me, okay? Here's the problem with that arrangement. You never really know if you've lived up to the standards. You can try, and some people even gravitate to churches that will give them rules to live by. And those rules usually have more to say about what they shouldn't do than what they should, like don't do this, don't do that, don't do this. And if they follow those rules, well, okay, maybe I'll know that God's going to accept me. But God's acceptance, love, and blessing in your life is not predicated on you keeping rules, doing things or not doing certain things. God loves you, blesses you, and accepts you because his heart is full of love. And that's called grace, okay? That's what grace is. When Christians get a handle on this thing, it really creates a huge change in their approach to God. Now, the way this usually gets connected to us in our lives is when we ask ourselves one very important question. When did God show his love for me? Now, stop and think about that. When did God show his love for you? When? Was it after you cleaned yourself up? That's our natural inclination. Do you know, have you ever invited somebody to church and had them say, well, you know, I appreciate the invitation, and I might come with you someday, but, you know, for right now, there's just some things in my life I kind of need to get squared away. Once I get those things kind of, you know, dialed in, then I'll consider coming to church. That person has church completely backwards. They think you got to clean up to come to church, which to them is coming to God. I'll come to God when I get my act together. Really? Okay, yeah, how's that working for you? Sort of a thing, you know what I mean? But what we finally come to terms with as believers at some point is that God's love for us happened before we got our act together. Look at this passage from Romans chapter five. Paul writes this. God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life? This becomes this enormous revelation. It's like a light that goes on in our lives. And we begin to realize, you know what? God demonstrated his absolute total commitment to love me, to accept me while I was still an enemy. He didn't say to me, no, listen, here's the deal. Go get yourself kind of cleaned up. Go get these things, you know, your marriage, it's a mess. Go get it fixed. These relationships with your kids and your kids, they're a train wreck. Get those kids squared away, get them under control. Oh, and you know those words that come out of your mouth from time to time when you're a little bit angry? Knock that stuff off. And I've got a few other things for you not to do. And then once you kind of get that dialed in, why don't you come to me and I'll receive you? God doesn't say that, does he? It says while we were still sinners, while we were God's enemies, he took the step to show us the most powerful, the most dynamic expression of his love that could be expressed. While we were, you see what's going on here? This begins to change my whole way of thinking. It begins to cause me to realize I can get off the performance track. I can get off that idea that I've got to do good or be good enough to earn God's love and blessing and acceptance. And that, people, is grace. And when grace enters into your life, peace is the result, which is why Paul said grace and peace to you. Always in that order. Huge revelation, huge revelation. You know how it's fun to see people when they have revelations. I love seeing the light. Just come on in people's hearts and minds when you when I'm sharing the Word of God and teaching things and just it's so cool just to see people just Just turn on Sometimes revelations are kind of funny. I got to tell you a quick story my five-year-old granddaughter. I just heard about this yesterday She came to her mom and she said this is Olivia. She's a sweetheart She's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she's a sweetheart. Anyway, she she comes up to her mom. She goes mom I was just watching VeggieTales All the people are vegetables And Nellie said you figured that out you did you she goes yep all of them Revelation, you know They're vegetables Anyway, it's kind of fun, you know just to see see the light kind of come up but how much greater is it when someone realizes I Don't have to measure up with God to receive his love I Don't have to measure up with God to receive his blessing. You know, what's crazy about the love and blessing of God I've told you this before but I have been the recipient of God's blessing Often after some of the worst mistakes that I've made in my life And that's the crazy thing about it and you read that in the Bible sometimes, you know, we've been going through Genesis on Wednesday night Abram takes his family to Egypt because there's a famine in the land where God called him to and what does he do? He immediately gets his family into trouble He has to start lying to try to save his own skin. And what does Abraham leave Egypt with? All kinds of blessings. I mean, it's like the Pharaoh says, you know, hey, why don't you leave the land? And by the way, I'm gonna give you all these gifts, you know, and I'm like God, what are you doing? You're blessing this guy, even though he just made a huge mistake That's grace That's grace And when we get a hold of it it produces peace, all right Now that we know where peace comes from and that peace between us and God God wants you and I To take that peace that ability to make peace with him And take it to a lost and dying world. In fact, did you know that that is in that is your calling? Let me put a passage on the screen here from 2nd Corinthians. Here's what it says It says all this is from God who? Reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation that God was Reconciling the world to himself in Christ or in the person of Christ not counting men's sins against them And he has committed to us. He repeats the message of Reconciliation. In fact, he says, you know, it's kind of like we're Christ's ambassadors As though God were making his appeal through us All right. Did you know that? Do you know you had a calling before the Lord as like an ambassador of? Peace to go into the world and to tell people hey Did you know that you can have peace with God and if somebody says to you? I don't want to hear anything about God You know what you're dealing with you're dealing with a person who is not at peace with God And you can come right back to him and say wow, you have a really kind of a nasty attitude about God. Yeah Well, did you know there's peace you can have peace with God? Really? Yeah through Jesus Christ. He died on the cross for your sins And if you will accept that you can have peace with him. In fact, I'm one of his ambassadors You know like to introduce myself Ambassador Paul and no, we're not making up name tags But do you see this is your ministry this is what God has called you to Not just to sit on your hands and enjoy The repeat of the peace of God now that you know, you are a recipient of it But to go out and share it with others Jesus pronounces a blessed condition upon those who will share that and tell other people Hey, there's peace with God. You can have peace with God and there's only one way to find it though. It's through Jesus Christ Okay This Ministry that you and I have to go out and tell people there can be peace with God Can be challenged and hindered by something I hate to have to even bring it up But the fact of the matter is while you and I are going out telling people they can have peace with God Sometimes our words ring a little hollow Because there is not sufficient peace in our own lives Have you ever heard somebody say and maybe you believe this before you came to Christ that the church is full of hypocrites Well, guess what? Sometimes it is. Absolutely true and When we go out to the world and tell them they can have peace with God and yet we ourselves Are languishing in division and strife between us What does that say About the legitimacy and the validity and the strength of our words to them about having peace with God It's like man, you're telling me I have peace with God. You don't even have peace with your family You know I heard you yelling at your wife the other week after church and your kids and you and you keep telling me how you've got this relationship with this guy at work and you're constantly criticizing the guy and and there's no peace in your life of any kind of a Reality and yet you're talking to me about having peace with God. You see that can be a problem We remember that Jesus said to us in John chapter 13 up on the screen here Says by this all men will know that you are my disciples how he says if you love one another You know that verse has kind of a haunting quality to it We read it and we see very quickly how far we have fallen short of the ideal of You know declaring our discipleship of Jesus Christ by our relationships by our love that we have one for another and We have to remember that that is a huge part of it now Here's the here's the difficult thing about having peace with people is that it's a two-way street, isn't it? if somebody Is Not at peace with you There's only so much you can do. I mean you can extend yourself to them But ultimately if they're not willing to reconcile with you You know, it's difficult to take any further steps and that is why Paul wrote to the Romans in chapter 12, and he said if it is Possible as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Did you notice what that verse says? It doesn't just say live at peace with everyone Because that's not always possible. Is it sometimes there are people in our lives who you know We come to them and we say hey, you know what this the issue that going on between us. Let's get this reconciled Let's get this thing squared away Because you know, we have a calling to be ambassadors of peace to the world and yet you and I aren't at peace So can we get this thing solved and they you know, they can look you right in the eye and they can say No, sorry I'm not going to be at peace with you. Well at that point people It's out of your hands. You've done what you could Now it's between that person and the Lord Because you made an ovation to them of Reconciliation and they refused your ovation. So therefore now they have to deal with this with God But you have the comfort of knowing you did what you could You went to them you apologized, you know for whatever I have done I'm I know that I've done things to hurt you. I know that I've done things to offend you. I am sorry We need to get this thing squared away We are brothers or brothers and sisters in Jesus and this just doesn't look good on our resume of being peacemakers We don't even have peace between ourselves. Let's get this thing squared away. They say no don't not interested well, you know at that point I think you're kind of You've done what you can the psalmist, you know, even in the Psalms this Frustration of just not being able to resolve issues is talked about in

. Well, that's that's see that's their business. That's their issue you've done what you can you go to your you go to that person and you say let's get this thing squared away and That's what you need to do now Let me stop here for just a moment. Let me Define just for a moment a Biblical peacemaker because I've been using that term peacemaker here this morning and some of you may have been Attaching a definition that may not in fact be a true biblical definition of what it means to be a peacemaker because some of you are Peacemakers but not in the biblical sense and I think every family has a peacemaker in it or two And though and what I'm talking about are the people Who are always trying to make people get along and if you're one of those people, you know who you are You probably hate family gatherings because you know that people are gonna come together and they're gonna you know be twits one to another and you're gonna have to step in there and try to resolve those issues with them and you're Like I'm just constantly trying to you know, make these people play nice and And you know, it's just so hard to get them to do that Can I suggest to you that that kind of a peacemaker isn't really what Jesus is talking about here Because Peacemakers in families are usually willing and ready to make peace at whatever cost That's not really what Jesus is talking about when he said blessed are the peacemakers he's talking about individuals Who bring the gospel and the death burial and resurrection of Jesus into a situation to begin to foster Peace you see in the church. We don't believe in peace at any cost We want people to have peace But we know that there's only one way to truly get it. It's through Christ and Embracing his death on the cross. We don't say to people. Well, I just really want you to have peace with God So if you're into kind of Buddha or you're into meditation or you're into like some of these ancient Eastern Mystic writers and if that brings you peace, well, then praise the Lord. No, we don't do that It's not peace at any cost Jesus Paid the price he is the cost and it was very costly For him to bring peace between God and man and that is the mechanism of peace that we are out sharing with people you see it's not peace at any cost and and so the a peacemaker from a biblical sense is Somebody who because of or in the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ Fosters peace peace between God and men peace between men and men women and men women and women and so forth it's because of Jesus that we can have peace, you know, I found a Quotation that I want to show you goes like this people can never have peace by sweeping sins Under the rug and pretending they're not there man's wisdom says cover up sin get just keep things together whatever the cost God's wisdom says confess sin and My peace will keep things together See that's a whole different mechanism for peace the cross of Jesus Christ do you know that Jesus is referred to as the Prince of Peace and Peace is what he does best But he earned us that peace by dying for us on the cross wiping out our sins So that we might have peace with God and when we have peace with God we can then be Peacemakers with others and encourage them to have peace with God once again, though Predicated upon what Jesus did there on the cross and his death paying our price. Amen You