A Personal Devotional Journal

I invite you to journey with me. Sometimes we will look at short passages of Scripture and I will give my first thoughts and impressions. Other times, I will just share my thinking about spiritual issues. Always, you are welcome to comment and add your thoughts. Together, we could learn something.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Matthew 5:9 "Peacemakers or just Peace-lovers?"

One thing we have discovered so far as we look at the Beatitudes is that these Kingdom qualities are not what they at first seem –what at first seems almost like a cute little poem is actually a radical manifesto that questions everything we have assumed to be true about life.

You might remember that I started this series with a statement by author, Tony Campolo, who said that the Beatitudes are like somebody went into the Department Store of Life and switched all price tags around; the things that we always assumed were valuable, Jesus implies have little value in God’s Kingdom –things like wealth and fame and influence and power. On the other hand, things that this world doesn’t value very highly are priceless in God’s Kingdom –things like brokenness and meekness and mercy.

I think that today we are going to find this same dynamic to be true. The 7th Beatitude found at Matthew 5:9 is not saying what it at first seems to be saying.

Matthew 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”

The first thing I want to look at today is this phrase, sons of God. We know that Jesus was, literally, the Son of God –capital S, capital G. Obviously we are not and cannot be Sons of God in the same sense that Jesus is the Son of God. On the other hand, there is a sense that the New Testament talks about in which we, as believers in Christ, forgiven through the shed blood of Christ, are adopted into the family of God and have become children of God through adoption. In the first chapter of John, for instance, we are told that, “To as many as believed, He gave the right to become sons of God.” This should be understood in a literal sense. God actually makes us His children with all of the benefits and the inheritance that go along with being children of God.

In this context, being children of God is related to salvation. This Beatitude, however, is not saying that we can somehow earn salvation by being peacemakers. So, the figure of speech that Jesus uses here, “sons of God,” is an entirely different thing than places in Scripture that refer to those who are in Christ as “children of God.

When Jesus says in our Scripture this morning “they shall be called sons of God,” He is actually making use a fairly common figure of speech in the Hebrew culture. In a general sense, when an actual family relationship was not being talked about, the expression “son of...” was used to describe a defining characteristic of someone. For example, when Jesus called James and John the sons of thunder, he was not saying that their father was thunder, or even that their father had some thunder-like quality about him, he was describing a quality that James and John had. James and John were volatile, hot-headed, and explosive. You might remember when a certain village slighted Jesus and the disciples, James and John asked Jesus for permission to call down fire from heaven on the town. Jesus called them sons of thunder because they had a thunder kind of quality about them.

Jesus regularly referred to himself as the son of man. Now that seems like a strange way for a person to describe himself. Obviously, all humans are sons of men. But, in Jesus’ case, Jesus was God in human form. We know Jesus to be the Son of God. So when Jesus called Himself son of man, He was identifying in Himself the quality that made Him fully human. Jesus had a God-like quality, but He also had the qualities of humanity.

Now, as we look at what Jesus is saying , “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God," we should understand this to mean that peacemakers will be identified by others as having a god-like quality. We might read this then, as Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called godly. If we are peacemakers in the Biblical sense, we will be known for our godliness. But what does peacemaking mean in the Biblical sense? Lets look for a few minutes now at what Jesus meant by peacemakers.

Everybody likes peace. Everybody desires peace –at least for themselves on a personal level. It’s not very often you hear anybody say, “Boy, I sure could use a little more noise and confusion and frustration in my life.” Even though we all want a sense of peace and serenity and security, for most of us, peace is kind of an elusive thing; its hard to grab hold of and even harder to hang on to. That may be because we don’t truly understand what peace is, and we certainly have misunderstood how to get it.

With all good and godly things, Satan has a perversion, an imitation that he tries to pass off as the real thing. Too often we buy the lie instead of what God actually intended. For example, Satan perverts the godly quality of righteousness into self-righteousness. He causes us to think that meekness is the same as cowardice. He tricks us into trying to hide sin and guilt and shame instead of unmasking it and mourning over it so that it can be forgiven. He causes us to fill our spiritual hunger and thirst with things that are not spiritually nutritious and do not truly satisfy. Satan is a master of causing us to see things unclearly and think about things incorrectly. And the way he perverts our thinking about peacemaking is that he often dupes us into thinking that peace making and peace loving are the same thing. Or sometimes he causes us to think that peace making and peace-keeping are the same thing.

The way this works out in our lives is that because we desire peace, we love peace, we are peace lovers, we avoid anything that interferes with peace. We become, I suppose, in an inferior sense, peace-keepers. Whether in the family, or at work, or in the church, we avoid issues that threaten the peace. The moment a hot topic comes up, we try to change the subject. Now, I think it’s obvious that this kind of peace keeping does keep some semblance of peace. If controversy is avoided at all costs, nobody gets upset. If nobody is upset, nobody gets hurt feelings. We think of this almost in a noble sense. We are keeping the peace.

But this is not at all what Jesus is talking about. There is a sense in which we can avoid confrontation, but this kind of peace is surface peace. it is not godly peace. This is keeping the peace at the expense of dealing with reality, at the expense of the truth. It is obvious that in the family setting this kind of peace-keeping is sometimes devastating. Almost always, for instance, child abuse is accompanied by a statement like, “Don’t tell your teacher, or friends or anybody what happened because it would get mommy or daddy in trouble.” Silence may avoid trouble but it does not bring peace.

The peace making that Jesus is talking about is not afraid of confrontation because God’s peace is always rooted and grounded in truth. The kind of peace that God calls us to is not mushy. It is not born of silence and avoidance and pretending that all is well when all is not well. And God’s peace is never characterized by appeasement and lack of conviction.

Real peace making may, in reality be exactly opposite of what we have always assumed. Real peacemaking sometimes involves moving right into the middle of controversy and resisting peer pressure, and confronting sin, and disagreeing with the majority, and declaring, instead, God’s truth.

Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the Son of God, did not tip-toe around the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of His day. He didn’t avoid the truth. He didn’t pretend that they weren’t really all that bad. Jesus got right in the faces of the Pharisees and said, “You guys are like white-washed sepulchers. You look good on the outside, but inside you are filled with death. You look good on the outside, but inside you are filled with sin and corruption.” You can hardly call that keeping the peace. And Jesus twice went to the temple and over turned tables and used violence and force to drive out the money-changers doing business and making money at the expense of those who came to get right with God. That wasn’t keeping the peace. But you know what, it was making peace. It was making peace because true peace only comes from a right relationship with God. In essence, what Jesus was doing when he confronted these guys is he was saying, “Even if it makes you angry, if nobody intervenes and shows you the truth that your delusion of holiness, your delusion of spirituality is keeping you from actually knowing God, then you have no hope. So, I’m going to break the silence and tell you what nobody else has the guts to say.”

Having said all that I’ve said so far, I now want to give us a warning -a serious warning. While real peace making is always grounded in the truth, simply telling the truth is not necessarily peace making. Do you hear what I’m trying to say? We all know that it is very possible to misuse the truth to hurt and humiliate people. That is not peacemaking and it is not godly. Real peacemakers do not stir up confrontation for the selfish reasons. While peacemakers are willing to confront issues and confront sin, it is always with a heart for reconciliation and healing and restoration.

Blessed are those who bring the ministry of healing, forgiveness, grace and reconciliation to a lost, dying world, to our homes, and our schools, and our jobs, and our churches. We bring that peace, not by avoiding hard issues, but by proclaiming God’s truth in love with a view to reconcile and heal and restore a right relationship with God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called godly.

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