Blessed are the peacemakers

Do you indeed decree what is right, you gods? Do you judge the children of man uprightly? No, in your hearts you devise wrongs; your hands deal out violence on earth. The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray from birth, speaking lies. They have venom like the venom of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stops its ear, so that it does not hear the voice of charmers or of the cunning enchanter.

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Reading

Matthew 5:9 ESV

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

Sermon

Matthew 5:9 ESV

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

It would seem that this of all the beatitudes is something even the most ardent athiest would agree with.

The world craves and seeks after Peace

Catalogue of Human Conflict

in Past 4000 years, only 300 years have not had a major conflict.

The Beatitudes for Today Catalogue of Conflict

John MacArthur wryly comments, ‘Peace is merely that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stops to reload.

Genesis 6:11 ESV

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

The old Testament echos over a thousand years of conflict

David wrote ...

Psalm 55:9 ESV

Destroy, O Lord, divide their tongues; for I see violence and strife in the city.

Asaph wrote...

Psalm 73:6 ESV

Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.

Ezekiel 7:23 ESV

“Forge a chain! For the land is full of bloody crimes and the city is full of violence.

Proverbs 13:2 ESV

From the fruit of his mouth a man eats what is good, but the desire of the treacherous is for violence.

Violence (Hebrew) - Hamas

carrying with it a sense of extreme wickedness

400 years between old and new testaments - at least 5 battles of Jerusalem

1 million Jews died when Roman Emperor Titus invaded the city in AD 70

Between 1480 - 1941

Great Britain - 78 Major Wars

France - 16

Spain - 64

Russia - 61

Austria - 52

Germany - 23

USA - 13

China - 11

Japan - 19

Twentieth century was hailed as the beginning of a millenium of peace

WWI (1914-1918) - 30 million killed

League of nations setup - 58 counties signed it covenant of membership - yet 11 years later...

WWII (1938-1946)

United Nation Established

Threat of Nuclear war

Stock pile reached 320 billion tons of high explosives (100 tons for every man, woman and child on earth)

USA had enough nerve gas to kill life in an area of 455 million square miles (8 x world surface)

Tentieth century ended up the most violent century in history

Chinese Cultural Revolution - 1966

Cambodia

Civil war (1955 - 1975) 30k - 500k killed

Communist Genocide (1976-1978) - up to 3 million killed

Bangladesh War of Independance (1971)

Independent Researchers - 300k-500k (many civilians)

Government Figures - 3 million

Rwanda (1994) - 500k

Not including Russian conflicts or African/Asian/South American conflicts

Man’s desire for conflict is clear and the chief attribute of human history

Politican & Racial conflicts simmer in most cities

Crime in recent years continues to spiral

Young people rebel against authority in their search for identity, reality and security

Break down of marriages (1 in 3 end in divorce)

Many of those that don’t end in divorce end up a semi-detached charades in which love has given way to bitterness or cold consensus to live a lie

Root of the Trouble

Two Testamonies

Quote - 2 slides

The Beatitudes for Today The Root of the Trouble

the Scottish theologian John Murray, writing in National Republic Magazine at the end of 1942 when World War II was at its height: ‘It is, no doubt, impossible for us to diagnose all the affections, motives, acts and purposes that have converged upon one another, that have interacted with one another, and that in unison bear the onus of responsibility for the gigantic catastrophe that has now befallen the world. We must recognize that a complex movement having its root far back in history, a complex movement of sinful impulse, ambition and action that only the all-seeing eye of God can fully view and diagnose, lies back of, and comes to fruition in, this present conflict.’

Quote - 3 Slides

The Beatitudes for Today The Root of the Trouble

Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921 and whose theories of relativity revolutionized man’s thinking about the nature of time and space. In the course of a lecture delivered in 1948, he made the following comment on the threat of nuclear warfare: ‘It is not a physical problem, but an ethical one. What terrifies us is not the explosive force of the atomic bomb, but the power of the wickedness of the human heart, its explosive power for evil.’

Bible quotes ...

James 4:1–2 ESV

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.

“your passions” = “Hedonon” from which we get Hedonism (self-satifaction)

1 Peter 2:11 ESV

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

“Wage war” is same words as James “at war”

James is saying that the cause of all human conflict is man’s deep-rooted determination to get his own way, an attitude which inevitably brings him into contention not only with God but with his fellow men.

Isaiah 57:20–21 ESV

But the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”

mans problem is not external but internal

Jesus made it clear

Mark 7:20–22 ESV

And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

Paul reiterated

Galatians 5:19–21 ESV

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

After Adam rebelled against God he had a son… (Geneology from Adam to Noah)

Cain & Abel

Genesis 5:3–4 ESV

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters.

Matthew 5:9 ESV

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

This verse does not apply to those even with the best efforts of international diplomacy

Paul wrote...

Galatians 5:22–23 ESV

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

these are naturally aquired through discapline and unaided self-effort

they are implanted in the heart by the Hoy Spirit

The Beatitudes for Today The Root of the Trouble

Martyn Lloyd-Jones rightly says, ‘There is nothing more fatal than for the natural man to think that he can take the Beatitudes and put them into practice.’

Beatitudes are not a programme/directive but a portait/description

God’s Word of Peace

400 references in Scripture to “peace”

above all the word is used in the Bible to speak of God and the Gospel

1 Thessalonians 5:23 ESV

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Luke 1:79 ESV

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Jesus spoke to his disciples...

John 14:27 ESV

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Man’s rebelion against God

Romans 8:7 ESV

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.

This enmity is so deeply entrenched that, as the great eighteenth-century theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards put it, ‘Unconverted men would kill God if they could get at him.’

When Man sinned he became God’s enemy and God Banished him from the Graden of Eden

Cut off from his relationship with God

Cut off from the Tree of Life

Romans 5:10 ESV

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Man is sinfully the enemy of God

God is rightously the enemy of Man

The glory of the Gospel

Man had neither the desirte not the ability to remedy

God, the innocent part, did something which enabled man, the guilty party, to return to peace

2 Corinthians 5:19 ESV

that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

He sent Jesus into the world to take upon himself the sin, guilt and condemnation which men richly deserved

God removed the barrier which seperated sinful creatures from their sinless creator

In his death, Jesus made peace between God and those for whom he died by removing once and for all the cause of their seperation

Paul reminded his fellow Christians...

Colossians 1:21–22 ESV

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Man’s reconciliation to God is the very heart of the Gospel

God’s rightous wrath was turned away from those who deserved it and borne by his own sinless Son, who died in their place on their behalf

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Sinners are urged...

2 Corinthians 5:20 ESV

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Those who through regeneration are enabled to respond in repentance and faith are brought into a right relationship with God, join paul in saying...

Romans 5:1 ESV

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The death of Christ in the place of sinners has broken down not only the barrier between God and Man, but the barriers which divided men from each other

Jesus abolished in his flesh the law with its ‘commandements and regulations’

God’s written law for the Jews emodied a series of ‘commandments and regulations’ which they were called to obey in order to approach God

This law eventally became the flashgpoint of terrible enmity between Jews and Gentiles

Jews pointed to it as a sign of their superiority and despised the Gentiles

The gentiles in turn hated the Jews for their arrogant claims

Colossians 2:14 ESV

by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

The ‘written code’ was a statement of indebtedness, evidence of man’s disobedience and guilt through his failure to keep the lw.

But Christ satisified the demands of the law by his perfect obedience and substitutionary death

He opened the way for Jews and Gentiles to get right with God on the same basis - his life and death on their behalf

As a result there is no place for human distinctions among those who trust in Christ

Galatians 3:26–28 ESV

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Any immutable characteristcs or attributes are unimportant in relation to issues of salvation or Christian living

Christians having been reconciled to God have been made One in Christ Jesus

They are also at peace with the world, in the sense that they do not fragment mankind into ethnic of other groupings and treat them on that basis.

They regard humanity with ‘sincere benevolence (John Brown) and long with equal concern for all people’s to know genuine peace with God

Acts 10:36 ESV

As for the word that he sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all),

Final Point

Those who cause divisions are unbelievers

True Christians are known as peacemakers, who take the Gospel of Peace to all people

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Closing Prayer

Doxology

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