Peacemakers

Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book, first to the book of Galatians, chapter 5. We’ll also look – you see in your bulletin – at the book of Ephesians chapter 2, the book of Philippians chapter 4, and the book of Matthew chapter 5. As you’re turning there, tonight we’ll be looking – we’re in a series on Sunday nights and it’s a sermon series on the fruit of the Spirit – tonight we’ll be looking at the fruit of peace; peacemaking.

And before we read, something to help us orient to our passage. This past month was the eighth anniversary of the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina at the historic Emanuel AME church; one of the oldest black churches in the United States. During a prayer service on June 17, 2015, nine people were killed by a gunman. Most of you will remember the God-like response, the supernatural response of the victims’ families in the days that followed. The shooter was white. He later confessed that he committed the shootings in hopes of igniting a race war. And one of the responses made – this was not 24 hours after the shooting – was the mother of a young man named Tywanza Sanders. So, she looked at her son’s killer and she said to him, “We welcomed you into our Bible study. You have killed some of the most beautiful people I have ever known. Every fiber of my body hurts, but we would say to you what we said to you that night, that we enjoyed you and may God have mercy on you.” That was one response. Another response, the daughter of seventy-year-old, Ethel Lance, said to the shooter, “You took something very precious from me, but I forgive you.” She said this through tears. And she said, “It hurts me. You hurt a lot of people, but may God forgive you.”

Tonight, we’re talking about peace. We’re talking about the fruit of peace, peacemaking. We’re going to talk about how to live as a changed man, as a changed woman, and how to live out of this new life that is given to us by Jesus; this new life that we are called to in our life together, this beautiful life. And Paul seems to think of the fruit as singular. It’s not plural. This is a conversation that often have with my dad who has always called Chipotle, Chipoles, or he calls Panera Bread, Paneras. This is not the fruits of the Spirit, you see, this is the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit for Paul is a package deal. It is a peace, meant to be true for every Christian. You cannot have one without the other if it’s truly the fruit of the Spirit. We might be prone to think that we are naturally stronger in one than in the others like the gifts of the Spirit; like maybe I’m stronger in patience but not in gentleness. But often that stronger fruit is more likely a counterfeit and it is a counterfeit of the fruit and could be traceable not to character but to personality or to natural temperament. But we have said that the fruit of the Spirit is not a virtue catalog. This is not a personality catalog or a natural temperament reservoir, a reserve. But the character qualities, this is about the character qualities that God in heaven Himself embodies. These are descriptions of Jesus’ character. Jesus is love. Jesus is full of joy. Jesus is peace. Jesus is full of patience. And which Jesus, we have said? Well, the Jesus that is inside of you, inhabiting you, and changing your character; drawing close to you and drawing you close to Him. “Life Together: The Fruit of the Spirit.” This evening we’re looking at the fruit of peace. So, let’s pray and ask God for His help as we consider it. Let’s pray.

Our great God and heavenly Father, Your Word says that “man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” So, we know that it could be that we see people around us tonight who appear to be cheerful and happy to be here and seem to be thriving, but it could be that You know and see very clearly the anxiety and sadness and the cynicism and maybe even the desire to be anywhere but here. And so, we pray tonight, as we actually are, that You would come and help us, that You would speak good news to us, that You would come and give Your Word success. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

So, God’s Word, beginning in Galatians chapter 5, verse 22:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Then turn a page over to Ephesians chapter 2, beginning in verse 13:

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

Now turn a few more pages to Philippians chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4, beginning in verse 6:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

And then one last text, Matthew chapter 5. This is the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter 5, in verse 9, Jesus says:

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

Amen. This is God’s Word.

Ernest Hemingway began his famous short story, The Capital of the World, with these lines:

“Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is the diminutive of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisement in the personal columns of El Libero which said: ‘PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA’ and how a squadron of city police had to be called out to disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the advertisement.”

And of course, the joke is not about the ubiquity of the name, Paco; it is about the ubiquity of reconciliation and peace. Peace is a subject which touches all of us. All of us need to make peace. All of us, to varying degrees, have strained relationships, have broken relationships. And even if there is not one person that’s in your mind when we begin this conversation that you’re harboring something against, peacemaking should still be of great interest to you. Jesus Himself said, “Blessed, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” So, peacemaking. We’re going to consider tonight peace by looking first at a definition of peace. So, what is Paul talking about, what is Jesus talking about when they talk about peace? How should we be people of peace, peacemakers? What does that mean? And then second, a direction. So first, the definition, and then second, the direction. How do we cultivate peace? The Bible gives us direction and how to do that in our life together.

So first, the definition; the definition of peace. Conflict is a part of our daily diet. Conflict is a part of our daily diet. Division and strife are a part of our lives. We live in a world that rarely knows peace, with unrest and violence coming from every corner, from every country that you can imagine. We brace for the next election cycle. We are a culture of contempt. And conflict is a part of our diet also often with the people closest to us. Even in this room tonight, there are those who come in with relational conflict and relational divisions and relational fractures and ruptures, who come burdened with the weight of struggle, who have conflict relationally. We have lost friends. We have unreconciled relationships. We have tensions with family or roommates or neighbors or coworkers. It may be that we long for peace, but we also have to say that we really do love to fight. We may say that we long for peace, but we really do love to fight. So, it’s an urgent question for every one of us. What is peace? Is peace just a pretty word only to be found in Sunday sermons, or can we actually find it in the real world, in the real world?

Peace is all over the Bible. You could say that the Bible begins with peace of God, bringing order out of chaos, and the Bible closes with peace, that we will be as Christians in the kingdom of peace, the wedding supper of the Lamb, of people from every tribe and tongue and nation. The Bible talks about peace with hundreds of references, but sin has fractured shalom. Sin has fractured that peace that we were made for, that we crave. And so restoring peace, as one commentator said, is God’s mission. He goes on to say, “His promise to restore humanity to a right relationship with Himself is called, Isaiah chapter 54 verse 10, ‘the covenant of peace.’ The One who fulfills that promise is Isaiah 9:6, the prince of peace, sent by none other than the One who is named repeatedly, Romans 15:33, the God of peace. And this is declared unto us in the proclamation of the Gospel of peace, Ephesians chapter 6 verse 15.”

One commentator has helpfully pointed out that when we survey the hundreds of instances in the Bible that we find the word “peace,” we begin to see that there are three main buckets, that there are three main types of peace of which the Bible speaks. So, the Bible speaks first of an eternal peace. And this commentator says that the peace between God and man that begins now in the hearts of Christians and will continue on into everlasting bliss forever. An eternal peace. Or we could say an objective peace with God. So, Romans chapter 5 that Charlie preached on last week – “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have” – what? “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So, he is using, Paul is using that word “peace” in the context of justification, of justification; what he just talked about in the children’s sermon. It’s not a subjective feeling, it’s not a subjective experience, but an objective status. The peace that Paul has in view in Romans chapter 5 is a peace of status. We could say a justification peace. Or Ephesians chapter 2 that we read, “You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for He Himself is our peace.” That is a justification peace; an eternal peace.

So, this eternal peace establishes a second type of peace or the second way that the Bible talks about peace, and that is an internal peace. This commentator says again, in the hearts of Christians, “There is a calm and trusting inner disposition and frame of spirit, no matter what happens in life.” And so, this peace has to be cultivated. This is the peace of God which Paul talks about in Philippians chapter 4. We read, “In everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard you, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” So, we could say that this internal peace that has to be cultivated can be cultivated by prayer plus thanksgiving. That’s what Paul is saying. This internal peace of prayer plus thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God and with thanksgiving, the peace then will guard your hearts and your minds.

So here then, this pours into a third and final peace. After being recipients of this objective peace, this justification peace that we have, and then cultivating by prayer and thanksgiving this internal peace, that after being recipients, we become conduits of peace, people who traffic in peace and practice peace, this third peace is then this external peace. And so an eternal peace, an internal peace, and then this external peace between me and my neighbor. And most commentators will say this is the peace that Paul has in view in Galatians chapter 5. This is where the fruit of the Spirit is seen most clearly – this external peace.

And so second, how do we cultivate this external peace? So that’s a definition of peace. The Bible talks about peace a lot; hundreds of references. These three different types of peace. Paul, in Galatians 5, is most clearly talking about the fruit of peacemaking in our lives. And so how do we cultivate that in our community, in our life together? I want to say that there are a few soils on which the fruit of peace grows. And so, I want to consider the soil of remembering and then the soil of sacrificing, and then last, the soil of persevering in our peacemaking.

So, in order for us to be agents of peace and conduits of peace in our community, in our life together, to be peacemakers, we have to first remember. We have to first learn again how we can receive peace for ourselves first, either that eternal peace or that internal peace. So, it is a truism that you never give away what you don’t first possess. And so, we can’t make peace if we don’t first possess peace. You have to possess peace before you can make peace. And there’s no way to practice peace if you don’t first have it. So really the first question is, “Have you found peace with God? Have you found peace with God?” You can’t cultivate peace, you cannot be a peacemaker, unless you have found peace with God. Either the eternal, objective justification peace, you have to deal with God, or this internal peace that you have to cultivate by prayer and by thanksgiving. And so, the truth is that you can be angry with God, you can be angry with Him because of your life and because of your relationships and because of your vocation and because of your circumstances and because of your spouse and because of your burdens. And maybe you would never admit it, but it is expressed in the relationships that you find around you and if you dig deep, you’ll realize that you’re not first angry with your spouse or with your circumstances; if you dig deep, you’ll understand it’s really just anger with God. It’s really just anger with God.

So, I want us first to think about this in this regard. If you are to be at peace, you have to deal with God. You think maybe of Jacob in Genesis 32 in that wrestling match that he had with God. And what did he say to Him? “I will not let You go,” he said, “I will not let You go unless You bless me.” You have to deal with Him. To become a peacemaker, you have to become at peace. And so maybe you have to deal with God tonight. You have to go to Him. You have to ask Him. You have to commune with Him. You have to confess to Him. You need to deal with God. And the only way for you to have peace is for you to deal with the work of Jesus on your behalf. He has made peace by the work of the blood of His cross. So, you have to deal with God. And then, you have to hang onto the story of His peacemaking in your life. You have to remember the story of His peacemaking in your life. There is a phrase in that famous parable, the parable of the prodigal son, that I have referenced before, I think about a lot. It’s Luke chapter 15 verse 20. And the phrase is, it starts and it says, “And he arose and came to his father,” but the phrase is, “and while he was still a long way off.” “And while he was still a long way off.” And so, the son created the conflict, but while he was still a long way off; the son created the division, but while he was still a long way off; the son created the rupture in the relationship, but while he was still a long way off. If he’s a long way off, the parable continues, his father saw him and he felt compassion and he ran and he embraced and he kissed him.

I don’t know if you have ever thought about that phrase. If he was a long way off, how did the father see him? Well, it had to be that he was looking for him. Well why was he looking for him? Well, it had to be that he was longing for him, that he was longing for him to come home. And so, the good news tonight for you, Christian, that’s your story. That while you were still a long way off, while you were still a long way off – you created the conflict, you created the division by your sin – while you were still a long way off, this is your story. The prodigal God who is the Prince of Peace, took all of your conflict, all of your sin on Himself, and He paid for them, He left them in the grave, He rose again. And Paul can now write Romans chapter 8 – “There is now no condemnation for you. You are at peace with God.” So, you see, He is the God who has pursued you with peace. This is your story. You have to remember your story. For you to be a peacemaker you have to first remember. You have to first remember that this is your story. That while you were still a long way off, God has pursued you with His peace. When the peace that Jesus has come to bring makes you, when the peace that Jesus has come to bring melts your hate, then you can be a peacemaker. When you do not have peace in your relationships, the first step is remember.

Secondly, sacrifice. I want you to look at that last text that we read, Matthew chapter 5 verse 9. The beatitude is not, “Blessed are those with peace” or “Blessed are those who know peace,” but “Blessed are the peacemakers.” And so, if we’re to not just remember but if we are to make peace, then we have to follow Jesus in His self-sacrificial pattern. God’s grace, God’s peacemaking in your life – how far? That’s a question that we ask sometimes. “How much will we let it affect us?” God’s grace. God’s peace in our life. How much? How far? To make peace is hard work. To make peace is a sacrifice. And Jesus comes and He says this compound word – “Blessed are the peacemakers.” It doesn’t say, “Blessed are the peaceful.” It’s not passive, but blessed are those who go and make peace. So, it’s not enough to know about peace. It’s not enough even to long for peace. It’s not enough even to have peace. But to be a peacemaker you have to make peace active; you have to make peace in all of the places where the Lord has planted us.

When you read the attending reward – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” – you probably notice Jesus uses the masculine word “son” or “sons of God” to refer to all Christians, male and female. And this is the use of metaphor just as much as men are included when Paul writes, “the bride of Christ.” Men are included and so women are included in this designation, “sons of God.” It’s a metaphor. And what is it a metaphor for? Sinclair Ferguson points out, he remarked on this language saying, “What are half of Jane Austin’s novels about?” See, I don’t just talk about sports! What are all of Jane Austin’s novels about? They’re about the fact that these daughters, he said, can’t inherit. These daughters in that time and place are going to be kicked out of the family home, he says, because daughters can’t inherit. So, in the world of the New Testament, Jesus here, and Paul in other places calls all of us “sons of God” because all of us, men and women, have the same privilege and it is that we are heirs. We are heirs. That’s the metaphor. We are legal heirs with the same inheritance which is all of the riches, all of the riches of God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ.

One commentator pointed out that in the Hebrew culture, in the Hebrew mind, to say that someone was the son of someone was not just to say that they are legal heirs with an inheritance, but it’s also to say that they were acting like or that they had character like their father. And so, when Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God,” he’s saying that when you make peace, that you act like God. That you’re God-like when you make peace. That you are God-like when you make peace.

Amy Biehl graduated from Stanford. She won a Fulbright Scholarship to research in South Africa. Two days before she was scheduled to return home to her family, Amy was pulled from her car and she was stabbed to death by a mob outside Cape Town. A few years later, Amy’s parents returned to the place where she was killed to meet with some of the killers’ families to console them. Her parents went to South Africa to console the families of the men who murdered their daughter. And the Biehl’s, you might have guessed, are Christians. Four young men had been sentenced for 18 years for Amy’s murder. And the Biehl’s had come to witness their testimony, to hear their pleas for amnesty before the truth and reconciliation commission. One writer puts it that, “They were able to bury their hurt, they were able to bury their anger, they were able to bury even their hatred.” Shortly after that trip, Amy’s father died, but her mom returned to South Africa again, this time to forgive the killers. And she developed a friendship with one man in particular named Ntobeko Peni. And Mrs. Biehl didn’t just forgive him; she gave him a job. She gave him a job at the Amy Biehl Foundation, which has programs around Cape Town. And he also travels around the world with Mrs. Biehl to share their story of forgiveness and reconciliation and peace. Mrs. Biehl introduces him and says, “This young man is a part of my family now.”

You see, it’s God-like; you are God-like when you make peace. And maybe there’s a risk as a minister when you share stories like the response of the victims, the families of the victims in Charleston, South Carolina and when you share stories like that of Mrs. Biehl. And the risk is that peace or that the work of peacemaking, that we think maybe it’s reserved for the spiritual elite. And I can tell you, there’s not a relationship in this room, there is not a father with a son, there is not a mother with a daughter, there is not a husband with a wife, there is not a sibling or a coworker or a friend, there is not a divided relationship, there is not one of those two or three relationships that have been lost. There’s not one that could not be helped and there’s not one that could not be healed by such a God-like posture. James writes about this. He says, “The wisdom from above is first pure and then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere and a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” This is costly. This is sacrifice. And only the Gospel can give it, but it is God-like.

I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you to think about and find one relationship. I want to try to apply this. I want you to find one relationship that you can leave here and you can try to make peace. You can pursue peace. You can pursue making peace. And I don’t know what is ahead of you in your relationships if you do this. You can’t control the outcomes, but you can orient your behavior to the way of Jesus.

And so, with the conflicts in our lives, the daily diet of conflict, we have to first remember, we have to, second, sacrifice, and then third and last and brief, we have to persevere. And I’ll be brief because next week, Wiley will preach, Lord willing, on the fruit of patience in our life together, but we need to understand that peacemaking doesn’t happen overnight. Peacemaking is like a seed-bearing fruit and over time, as we persevere, that slowly in this grace, as we persevere, that seed grows. Slowly the mountain of harvest is moved.

Let me close with this. Some time ago I was at a presbytery meeting. And in our tradition, a presbytery is a group of pastors and elders in churches in a particular region that get together every couple of months. And I don’t remember the specifics, but in the morning, we were dealing with conflict that was going on in a particular church in our presbytery. And I wasn’t involved in the shepherding, I don’t know the details, I just remember – and it is every time that you are navigating something with significant conflict in a church that it’s incredibly sad. And after we dealt with that situation, we worshiped together as elders and pastors and we took communion. And just before the elements were distributed, and a minister was behind a table up front just like we do here, the minister, he said that, he quoted that famous line from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. That if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go and first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. First, be reconciled. And after he said that and before the elements were distributed, there was a group of men from that church who were sitting in front of me. And there was a man that they had been in conflict with who walked in front of me and he tapped these men on the back and he said, “Let’s make peace.” He said, “I want to be reconciled.”

And it was this God-like and supernatural, beautiful and moving moment, but I’ve often wondered, “How did that end? How did that story end?” It was this beautiful moment, but how did it end? How can you from here take part in what one author calls “a long obedience in the same direction”? How can you walk the path of faithfulness as a peacemaker? How will your story end? How will the stories of your current conflicts and divisions and fractures end? How will they end? As we persevere, one day we will be welcomed to a place called the kingdom of peace and we will be with the Prince of Peace and we will taste and see and celebrate the Gospel of peace. And so, for now, let’s be peacemakers. Let’s not hang onto it, the peace that we have been given from God. Let’s be conduits of it because when we do, we are God-like. And so, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

Amen. Let me pray. Let’s pray.

Our God of all grace, we pray that You would come with Your peace tonight and from Your peace that You would make us peacemakers. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.