I associate myself with Mr. Lowes.
Welcome to you all this morning.
It's a holiday weekend and we thought that
the Wood family would be predominating this morning.
I mean the pews empty, Wood.
However, we rejoice to have so many of
you along and quite a number of visiting
friends among us.
Please feel welcome.
It's a great privilege and a great joy
for us to welcome the Lord's people wherever
you may come from.
We want you to feel today that here
at Knox we are delighted to have you.
May the Lord bless you as you go
back to your own congregations for whatever awaits
you there during this coming fall.
I would explain for the benefit of those
of you who are visiting us that earlier
on in the early summer we began a
series on the Sermon on the Mount and
due to vacation and one thing and another
we've not got very far.
But this morning we come to the ninth
verse in chapter five of Matthew's Gospel to
the attitude of our Lord that has to
do with the peacemakers.
Let me read verse nine to you in
chapter five.
Blessed, says our Lord, are the peacemakers for
they will be called sons of God.
Many a time we have pointed out the
contrast in the way our Lord comes, as
it were, dancing onto the scene here announcing
blessed, blessed, blessed.
Especially in the light of the fact that
the closing words of the Old Testament announce
judgment.
God in his infinite mercy has come into
time and he has brought within the reach
of men and women what God calls blessedness.
And what God calls blessedness is worthy of
the name.
It is not a bubble that will soon
vanish.
It is rather something substantive and eternal and
worth having at any cost, at any price.
Now our Lord has had quite a lot
of things to say about the way of
blessedness.
And there is a progression of thought.
He is leading us, as it were, from
one step to another beginning with poverty of
spirit.
And then he tells us that in order
to come to this experience of developing and
eternal blessedness we shall have to mourn for
our sins and be made meek.
And then to hunger and thirst after righteousness
and to learn to be merciful and to
discover purity of heart.
And then he comes to this.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
This is the way of blessedness.
If you are walking this way, sooner or
later you have to manifest that you are
a peacemaker in the biblical sense.
So the Beatitudes take another turn at this
point.
We have seen that in the first three,
the eye of the soul gazes inward, as
it were.
A person has become strangely conscious of his
own condition.
That's why he mourns for sin.
That's why he grieves and becomes meek in
the process.
Then, just after that, there comes a slightly
different turn already.
It is this.
Blessed, says Jesus, is the one who hungers
and thirsts after righteousness.
You notice what's happened.
He has seen something outside of himself.
A righteousness that God requires and that God
provides.
And he begins now to hunger for what
God gives by grace.
But the end is not yet.
Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, he must learn
to be merciful.
And learning to be merciful, he must be
pure in heart.
And learning to be pure in heart, he
must express it in this matter of peacemaking.
Peacemaking.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
You will notice that in the first part,
therefore, of the Beatitudes, the first section, the
emphasis has been upon character.
Upon character.
And we do note, we do well to
note, the basic approach of Christianity and the
basic approach of our Lord to life.
It's very evident here in these Beatitudes.
It's evident in many other places too.
The most important thing is character.
Jesus would have us become a certain kind
of people in order that we may be
capable of living a certain kind of life.
We can only do what God requires us
to do when we have become what God
requires us to be.
In this 20th century, we in North America
are terribly taken up with the matter of
doing.
Now doing is important.
But from the biblical perspective, we must first
of all learn to be what God requires
of us.
And that's the emphasis here in the Sermon
on the Mount.
We shall have a whole concourse of ethical
injunctions brought before us one after another, but
they are built upon the kind of character
that our Lord delineates first of all in
these Beatitudes.
Now don't let me go ahead of myself.
I'm just wanting to say now that you
do not become a peacemaker in the biblical
sense and in the Christian sense before you
have become poor in spirit and mourn for
your sin and been made meek and begun
to hunger and thirst after righteousness and know
something of being merciful to others and purity
of heart emerging.
In other words, becoming peacemakers is dependent again
you see upon character.
That's a matter of principle.
Having said that, let's come to the very
challenging word before us this morning.
I don't think we can say anything about
this text other than that it is terribly
challenging.
The first thing I would like you to
notice is the passion that should predominate in
the lives of God's people.
A passion for peace.
Blessed, says Jesus Christ, are the peacemakers.
And note carefully that the word that is
used is peacemakers, not peace talkers
or peace dreamers or simply peace planners or
peace lovers.
You can think about peace and that's good.
You can read about peace and that's good.
You can plan for peace and that's necessary.
But the emphasis here in our text this
morning is beyond all that, peacemakers.
People who are involved in the act, in
the art of making peace.
And our Lord, quite evidently from the Sermon
on the Mount, expects every Christian to be
involved in this.
This is nothing strange.
If you're acquainted with the New Testament, this
shouldn't strike you as something odd this morning.
It's part and parcel of the makeup of
a Christian.
This comes naturally, says our Lord.
This is the way of blessedness.
This is the way to glory.
You're a peacemaker.
You'll never get to glory unless you're a
peacemaker.
Our question very naturally comes up, of course,
in a very crucial question.
Who is our Lord referring to?
I may have answered it in part, but
I must face it squarely, lest there should
be any difficulty here.
Who is our Lord referring to?
Is he talking, for example, about folk who
take a pacifist line in life and do
not believe in any kind of involvement in
military affairs?
Was Jesus referring to them?
Is he referring to and is he saying
they are blessed who lead the band the
bomb marches or band the cruise marches?
Do they come within the category that our
Lord had in mind here?
Is he referring to them?
Who really did our Lord have in mind
here?
Can we say?
Can we be sure?
And now let me say one thing about
the leaders who ban the bomb or ban
the cruise or ban anything else that is
hostile and warring.
For my part, I have learned to salute
anybody that tries to diffuse conflagration and tries
to build a bridge between warring parties in
society, whether they be black and white, rich
and poor, employers, employees, whatever.
We have far too many people who go
out into each new day and the only
thing they do is to tear up society.
They tear up their own homes.
They tear up the office affairs where they
are.
They tear up friendships.
They're just tearing up and tearing down.
And I think we owe a little respect
to anybody, anywhere, who at any level whatsoever
is a peacemaker.
Even in the church of Jesus Christ, we
have many trigger-happy people.
Wherever they are, they have jagged edges.
They step on everybody's toe and they've got
to have their own way and if they
don't have their own way, you're in for
it.
Not necessarily the minister, but somebody is.
They plow through and they turn the turf
upside down and they break everything like a
plow breaks the sod.
That's not grace.
Now having said that, and I have to
say that, having said that, however, I believe
that our Lord Jesus is referring to a
quality of peacemaking that no man or woman
is capable of indulging in who is not
a Christian.
Our Lord is here referring of a quality
of peace which is so deep and so
extensive, indeed it is eternal in its significance
and however much we may know of it
here, it is but a foreglim of the
peace of the city of peace of heaven.
And the only people who can really be
involved in bringing about that kind of peace
are those who have already passed through the
experiences involved and implicit in the preceding beatitudes.
In other words, the only person who can
be a peacemaker in the sense in which
Jesus used the word is somebody who himself,
I repeat, and I repeat not because I've
got nothing else to say but because I
think it's important.
The only people who can be involved in
this kind of peacemaking are those who have
been humbled before God, who know before God
that they're poor in spirit, they're bankrupt.
And because morally and spiritually they know they're
lost, they mourn for their sin.
And they so mourn that they become meek.
They're not arrogant as they were.
They've lost the punch of arrogance and something
new has come in and they're meek, they're
tender, they're compassionate, they're merciful to others.
And they yearn for righteousness, to be right
with God and to do what is right
in the sight of God to everybody, to
everybody, everywhere.
They're concerned that the right should be done
for the glory of God.
And they're showing some measure of heart purity.
And you see, really, you and I cannot
be involved in peacemaking without some measure of
heart purity.
Our motives, for example, must be pure.
Our thoughts must be pure.
You cannot bring warring factions together and be
honest with both parties and speak the truth
in love.
You cannot do it unless your heart is
pure.
If you're a hypocrite, if you have an
evil intention, if you have a false motive,
then you simply cannot be a peacemaker in
this sense.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
How few there are.
The Jews of our Lord's day had been
looking for a warrior Messiah.
They were given the shock that caused them
disaster nationally, whereas it might have meant their
elevating eternally.
And the shock was this, that the Messiah
whom they had expected to be a warrior
came bringing peace.
Peace on earth, sang the angels.
Peace on earth.
The prophet looking forward to the day and
the apostle Paul looking back to the day
sang how beautiful on the mountains are the
feet of those who bring good news and
proclaim peace.
Jesus was introduced as the Prince of Peace.
Now, but we've got to bring in a
word here which may seem very contradictory.
Contradictory, may seem contradictory.
And I have to say it because I'm
sure you'll read your New Testaments and you
will come across it and you will wonder
now, a man in Knox this morning was
not really being honest with the Scriptures.
Well, all right.
It's necessary to see things here that must
be held in tension.
He came to bring peace.
He came to die to make peace.
Colossians chapter 1 has this amazing phrase, to
make peace by the blood of his cross.
And Paul says in Ephesians that he came
to preach peace to them that are far
off the Gentile nations, pagan, without any knowledge
of God said that you have from nature
and their own consciences, depraved as they were.
And to those that were near the Jews
who've been taught and educated in the Word
of God.
He came to preach peace.
Ah, but wait a moment.
Jesus also said this.
Do not suppose that I have come to
bring peace but a sword for I have
come to turn a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in
-law against her mother-in-law.
A man's enemy will be the members of
his very own household.
What does this mean?
This is contradictory of what we're saying.
It isn't really.
Jesus explains if you follow the context in
Matthew 10.
He explains and it's already involved in what
we've said.
He is the bringer of peace between man
and God and man and man.
But in the proclamation of peace to warring
men whose hearts are depraved, you get into
trouble.
When you preach peace to depraved men and
women, you'll be snubbed.
When you bring the truth to men who
love lies and love darkness, you will not
be welcomed.
On the contrary, what will happen is this.
They will ask you, who on earth are
you?
Who are you to tell us these things?
Who are you to tell us what's right?
Who are you to tell us what's wrong?
Who are you to tell us the way
of peace?
And so there will be a division starting
in the home between a mother and a
daughter, maybe a father and a son, maybe
a mother-in-law and a daughter-in
-law.
And so there will be division.
In peacemaking, there is warfare.
But the peacemaker doesn't make the war.
He's not responsible for it.
It is despite his godly character.
It is despite the fact that he mourns
for his own sin and loves righteousness and
is pure in heart.
Despite that, the worker will meet in his
own labors what Jesus met in his.
Some kind of crucifixion or other.
You will remember that our next study has
to do with these words of Jesus.
Blessed are you when men shall revile you
and persecute you and shall say all manner
of evil against you falsely for my sake.
What?
Against peacemakers?
Yeah.
You see, we live in a fallen world.
Many people think that the doctrine of sin
is something that theologians believe about or some
theologians believe in.
And it's not all that important.
I tell you, there's no understanding of the
world apart from the Bible.
We live in a fallen world.
The devil's running wild apart from the grace
and sovereign power of God.
And even when you bring the message of
peace to men who are languishing for it,
you'll be snubbed and you'll be hated and
in some sense you'll receive what your Lord
did.
Nevertheless, this is our calling.
And Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers for
they shall be called the sons, the children
of God.
In the light of the nature of this
peace then and of the context in which
we find this beatitude, we are now quite
clear about the answer to the question who
are the peacemakers?
They are those who have walked thus far
into the experience of blessedness that Jesus was
speaking about.
And it's increasing.
It's increasing as the days go by, as
obedience follows obedience.
I read a few, must be a year
or two ago now, a friend of mine
came back to me this week.
I read of an ex-soldier, a Britisher,
describing a revisit he made to a certain
German village two years after the end of
World War II.
On a Sunday morning, he and his friend
came into this village in a car.
And as they came down the main street,
the village was really just one main street,
one main thoroughfare.
He heard the bells of the church calling
people to worship.
Church on a high tower and beautiful bells.
And there they were calling people to worship
God.
And it was such a contrast to him
because the last time he went into that
village, there in the tower of the church
some Nazi soldiers were hiding, waiting for the
British to come.
And they mowed down a whole company of
his friends.
And he said he couldn't get over it.
Last time the message from the church tower
was death.
This time they were called to worship God.
I thought that was a parable.
This is the task of the peacemaker.
It's to bring out of the citadel of
man's soul those things that make for dispeace
and war and misery and hatred.
It's to transform the heart of man and
to install in that same heart the spirit
of worship and the spirit of grace and
the spirit of peace.
Do you know anything about this, my friend?
Are you a peacemaker because God has made
you into a new creature?
You have walked the way of the Beatitudes.
You have begun to drink of this divine
blessedness.
And as you have, you want to share
the peace of God that you have with
those who as yet have it not.
The passion that should predominate, the prize that
crowns.
Let's next look at this albeit briefly.
What, according to Jesus, what is it that
awaits those who are involved in this matter
of peacemaking?
Well, Jesus says they're blessed because they will
be called sons of God, literally sons of
God.
That's a generic term, of course, and refers
to children of God.
It's not cutting out the women folk at
all.
It includes both genders here.
They are the children of God.
Now there are two legitimate ways in which
the significance of this phrase sons of God
or children of God may be interpreted.
On the one hand, it was a very
natural and common idiom of Hebrew speech to
speak of sons of God.
And you would come across it.
They would use the word son or daughter,
but I'm talking of sons now.
They would use the word son and they
would bring another noun after it to qualify
it so that in the New Testament you
have reference to sons of thunder.
See, the word son or sons and then
a qualifying noun after it, sons of thunder.
What do they mean by that?
Well, they mean aggressive people.
The title was referred to two of the
disciples who were very immature at that point
and they wanted to bring down the judgment
of God upon anybody and everybody almost.
That may be an exaggeration, but allow me
that.
They wanted to bring down the judgment of
God and they were called sons of thunder.
They're out for thunder, all right.
And they were called sons of thunder.
Then you have the phrase sons of Belial,
literally meaning worthless people, people without substance.
Belial means empty.
Bel is that which is void.
Empty people.
There's nothing to them.
They're just bubbles.
Worthless people.
To the Hebrew mind, therefore, this phrase sons
of God or children of God might simply
mean godlike people.
They will be called godlike people.
When people see you about your peacemaking mission,
people will say of you, you're godlike.
To the Greek mind, however, the phrase went
further than that.
It amounted to saying that in the context
of this beatitude, peacemakers are blessed in that
they are recognized as children of God.
Peacemakers will be called not just godlike.
That's very precious.
If people say you're godlike, blessed be the
name of the Lord.
But the phrase probably goes beyond that, meaning
that you are indeed the child of God.
And this is what Jesus, I believe, had
in mind.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
They will be called children of God.
Now you have a problem.
Who's going to call them children of God?
Now you might be tempted to say almost
instinctively off the cuff, well, everybody.
Oh, no, no, no.
May I remind you of the next verse?
Blessed are you when men shall revile you
and persecute you, et cetera, et cetera.
Being reviled and persecuted by people in the
act of peacemaking, not called sons of God.
Who's going to call the peacemaker a child
of God?
Only two people, I think.
If you have been a rebel against God
and against society and someone comes with a
message of the grace of God as to
how to change your heart and transform your
being and give you a new birth and
a new start and a new nature that
puts you right with God and enables you
to live at peace with your neighbors, when
once you come to, you will recognize that
the person who brings that good news is
a child of God.
I have found this to be true in
my over 30 years in the ministry now
that people who are converted through someone will
find it very difficult to criticize the person
who was used in their conversion.
They are predisposed to think highly of him
or her.
And you will recognize in the bringer of
peace the pedigree of a child of God
because you see, this is God's great work.
What is God doing in the world?
Brothers and sisters, God put everything into the
enterprise of bringing peace to men and women
without peace.
And he's put all his vast resources into
this very task.
He sent the only begotten son of his
bosom.
What for?
Just to live among us as an image
of the kind of person we all ought
to be?
Well, that was involved.
But the purpose of God went well beyond
that.
He came, he sent his son to make
peace.
Man is at war with heaven.
Heaven is anathema to fallen mankind and the
ways of God are anathema.
We hate God in his holiness and in
his justice.
We only have any respect for a God
who is made after our own image.
Don't you hear people saying, Oh, I don't
believe that about God.
This is my God.
This is my view of God.
We make God after our own image, you
see, and that's the only God we really
respect.
But the God who was before us and
will be after us and is eternal and
is just and holy and righteous and true,
we don't like him by nature.
We're at loggerheads with him.
We are going our way rather than going
his way.
Now, we need peace with God.
And God sent his son and sent his
spirit in order having made peace by the
blood of his cross, by the spirit to
bring that peace into our hearts and shed
it abroad.
This is God's business.
And if you want to speak generally, this
is what God is doing in the world
today.
This is what evangelism is.
A poor line phrase for evangelism is the
ministry of reconciliation.
It's to declare peace with God through the
blood of Christ and it's to invite rebels
to come and lay down their arms and
have mercy and have pardon.
You see, it's a ministry of reconciliation so
that peacemaking in the full-blooded Christian sense
is nothing short of active, positive evangelism.
Are you involved in it?
And when you, knowing the truth of the
Bible, knowing enough about the New Testament, see
men and women involved in this ministry, you
will say, that's a child of God, that.
He's giving his life away to make peace
between God and men, between man and man,
between members of different families and whatnot.
He's a bringer of peace.
He's in his father's business.
He's involved in the business of the Father
in heaven and because of that we recognize
him as belonging to the Father.
His pedigree is proved by his activity.
But I think that Jesus had something else
in mind.
Not only will they recognize the peacemaker as
a child of God who have benefited from
the peace he proclaims and brings, but I
believe that Jesus meant this, blessed are the
peacemakers for they shall be called, they will
be called sons of God by God himself,
by God himself.
I mean this.
I believe that Jesus had something like this
in mind.
When he sees his children about his own
business, knowing that they will be buffeted and
persecuted for righteousness sake and for his sake,
knowing what awaits them, yet they go into
the distant places of the world and near
bringing the peace of God, trying to bring
estranged parties together.
I believe that there comes a point in
the experience of every peacemaker when God, as
it were, metaphorically puts his arm around that
person and says, my child, do you know
that experience?
Haven't you seen it in a family?
A kiddie has done something that pleases the
father, a little kiddie, of course.
I don't want to embarrass any growing up
lad or lass here, but a little kiddie.
He or she has been very obedient and
mummy or daddy pulls the little one, plucks
the little one up in his arms and
says, my child, my baby, my darling.
But you say, God doesn't do anything like
that.
Oh, doesn't he have?
Don't you read your Bible?
May I remind you of two occasions when
God could not keep silence but did exactly
that concerning his well-beloved son, Jesus Christ
our Lord.
When dedicating himself on Jordan's banks to bear
away the sin of the Lord, audibly the
unseen, invisible God says, this is my beloved
son in whom I am well pleased.
He put his arms around him and assured
him that he recognized him in the years
of people.
And again on the Mount of Transfiguration when
he rededicated his life to the same task,
God said the same thing, this is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.
Listen to him, he said.
Listen to him.
He's mine.
He's my child.
This is the kind of doctrine that we
have in Romans chapter 8 and verse 16
where Paul says the Spirit himself testifies along
with our spirits that we are the children
of God.
Do you know that this morning?
My dear friend, visiting friends, is there someone
here who doesn't know what this means?
Do you know of the Spirit of God
coming alongside your spirit and assuring you despite
all your failures and all your faults because
you believe in Jesus and trust in him,
you belong to me.
Has God ever whispered that in your ear?
Has the Holy Spirit come near enough to
you to assure you you belong to me
as part of the ongoing Christian experience?
So that the New English Bible, I'm nearly
finished.
The New English Bible translates this beatitude in
this way.
How blessed are the peacemakers.
God shall call them his sons.
That's it.
You are mine.
Many of you this morning may be languishing
for a new reassurance of the fact that
you are the children of God.
You've lost the assurance you had.
Shall I tell you the way?
And I've no doubt about it.
I'm absolutely sure of it.
Follow the way of the beatitudes.
Ask God for poverty of spirit in your
soul.
Mourn for your sin.
Learn the way of meekness.
Follow the way of the beatitudes.
And you know what will happen?
You'll get involved in peacemaking.
The love of Christ will constrain you, to
use a Pauline phrase, and you find you
want to share the peace of God with
all who are at war with themselves, and
at war with others, and at war with
heaven.
And God will bless you with a knowledge
that you're not only involved in his business,
you're a child of the family.
As I conclude, let me ask a question.
Could there be someone among us this morning
who's never set out on this way seriously?
You may have been a church member even,
and a communicant.
Or you may have been a very good
worker in the church, but you've never discovered
the true meaning of the first beatitude.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
You always thought of yourself as someone who
could enrich the Almighty with your good works
and your good deeds and your churchgoing, and
make God indebted to you.
But the first beatitude says, blessed are the
bankrupt in spirit.
Those who come to see that all their
righteousnesses, so called, are but filthy rags in
the sight of God.
That sin stains our loftiest desires and our
highest thoughts.
And sin marks miserably our attitudes and our
spirits as well as our deeds.
And so you can do nothing but cry,
I can't, I'm lost.
Brother and sister, that's the only place to
start.
And you've got to turn back from where
you are and you've got to come to
the opening, the wicked gate of the cross,
where you come in.
And I bid you this morning on this
holiday Sunday, if you have not begun before,
oh my friend, just where you are, sitting
in your seat.
You don't even need to close your eyes,
but you need to be honest with God.
Call upon Him to reveal this to you
and believe what He says and act on
it.
And then follow the way of the beatitudes
and see how the Spirit of God will
work in you and lead you from one
to the other, always deepening the experience as
you go on, making you more to mourn
for sin, making you more meek, giving you
greater hunger after righteousness.
And the more the hunger, the more the
blessedness.
And the more merciful you're able to become,
the more the blessedness.
And the more peacemaking you're involved in, the
greater the blessedness.
And if I may look forward, the more
you suffer for righteousness sake, the more the
blessedness.
That's the message of the beatitudes.
And for you good people who've been on
this road even longer than I have, you
faithful people of God, you men and women
of prayer and of faith and of obedience,
you great peacemakers, and there are so many
of you around, thank God for you, carry
on, be encouraged.
So many of us are blessed by your
very presence.
And your prayers are a benediction to us.
And what you do, but what you are
most of all, carry on.
Move out into a new fall season and
be what God has called you to be
and what you are already in process of
becoming in very large measure.
And may the peace of God that passes
understanding garrison your soul from every evil thing
and evil happening as we travel toward the
sunrise where warfare and sin and separation will
be unknown.
Hallelujah.
Let us pray.
Oh Lord, this book of yours is so
remarkable that the light that comes from it
is such as to blind us from time
to time.
And though we have been long familiar with
some of the words and have mouthed them
over and over again, yet they have this
habit and our experience becomes very much like
that of Moses when he saw one bush
among the multitudes of bushes in the backwoods
of the desert glowing with fire.
And in the fire was the great I
Am.
We have sensed your presence in this text
this morning, oh God of peace.
And we are grateful that in a world
such as ours with all its perils and
all its dangers in this nuclear age, you
are a God of peace.
Grant to your people individually and corporately more
and more to lay the foundation for a
peace that is greater than anything that can
come about by political action.
Precious, though any other kind of peace may
be in its way, but enable us to
aim at the highest and to be prepared
with our Lord Jesus to lay down our
lives, to bring it about.
We ask it in his holy name.
Amen.