The Happy Life: E6 The Peacemakers

Jacob Creighton: What's up everybody? Welcome back to the Formed Podcast with Pastor Chris Richards and myself. ⁓ What am I? Am I the MC or the host? I'm the host. I'm your host, Jacob Creighton. Yeah, the DJ, DJ Jacob Creighton. We are another week of the Happy Life series. Today we're talking about Blessed Are the Peacemakers. ⁓ I'm pulling it up.

Chris: We're here. You're the ⁓ are you the DJ? Can we call you like the DJ? Peacemakers, not anything else.

Jacob Creighton: the peacemakers, blessed are the peacemakers, Matthew 5 verse 9, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Yeah, Chris, you asked this question at the beginning of your sermon. ⁓ If you could just have this, then you'd finally be at peace. I want to hear what your answer is.

Matthew 5:9

Chris: Sons of God. Man, I it's funny, I know I called out ⁓ poor Sierra Linder ⁓ because she is like a week away from having a baby and you could just see it on her face. I had to apologize to her, but I I could see it on her face of like if this baby would just get out of me, I may be on the peace. But then she did admit later she was like, Yeah, but then it's a 3 a.m. wake up and there's no peace.

Jacob Creighton: I know. Yeah, you gotta share yours now. That's true and now she's getting called out again on the podcast so

Chris: For me, if only it I know I'm sorry, Sierra. I love Sierra though. She's great. I love Austin and Sierra. ⁓ if only ⁓ there's so many. ⁓ gracious, if only I feel like if only I had a few more hours in the day, I could I could have peace. I would definitely

Jacob Creighton: Yeah, they're great. ⁓ That's a good one. good one.

Chris: There's no other way use those for peace, right? Or so I think.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah. Yeah, right. Uh, this is funny. I was sitting next to Taylor when you asked that question. And of course she didn't think about her own answer. You know, she immediately looks to me and goes, what? I know what yours would be. And I was like, what are you talking about? I got about, the problem with me is I got about 12 of these.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yes, yes, yes.

Jacob Creighton: I was like, what's yours? What's yours for me? She said, ⁓ the Pirates winning the World Series. Yes, that's true. I'd finally be able to rest. ⁓ You know, I would never watch a Pirates game again, in her mind.

Chris: I have peace, yes. I agree with that.

Jacob Creighton: Because I'm holding out hope and I was like no no no no no that's not what I that's not came to mind came to mind was like what if I had if I had the time and a golf membership I'd finally I'd just be Zen out there. Just be me. Nobody else would even be on the course. It would just be me Walking and I was like, yeah, but that's that's something else. I'm working through so Yeah, it was a good one though. It was a good question

Chris: That's it. I knew that was coming. I knew that was coming. I'd say another one for me, you went hobby. I said if only, only I could be in a deer stand. Yeah. Or turkey blind, then I have peace.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna call Beth out on this podcast. Her answer would be a day at the office alone. Getting to do everything.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. A c a completed checklist.

Jacob Creighton: Completed checklist she can clip this up and put it on the reels ⁓ Yeah, but I if you have an answer that's kind of funny. I mean obviously There is some realness to this I think that that's actually gonna You know complete me and bring me peace if you got an answer ⁓ Drop in the comments. We'd love to hear them ⁓ If only you could have this Then you'd finally experience peace. What would it be? ⁓ It's a it's good exercise cuz it

Chris: Yes, you will.

Jacob Creighton: As we talked about last week, Blessed are the pure in heart. It kind of reveals what's going on in our heart a lot.

Chris: Man, it was it was funny to say it to the congregation because I could just see it on people's faces, like what they were thinking. It was great.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah. Yep. So good. So you helped kind of peace making. You told us what peacemaking is not. And then you told us what peacemaking is. I think that we... ⁓ It helped me realize we've got a lot of wrong definitions of peacemaking that sound pretty close. ⁓ Like conflict avoiding. ⁓ Maybe the situation is peaceful. If you're avoiding the conflict, then maybe you're not bringing up the drama.

Chris: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: It's not going to a place you don't want it to go, so I get that. But that's not peacemaking. And then on the other side, you've got maybe just even the absence of conflict altogether. And so you're not going to create the conflict because you just want things to be all right. But then again, you're not making any progress with maybe it's a relationship or something that needs to be confronted and

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: There's not a problem that's actually dealt with. There was another side to this that I was gonna hit. I can't remember what it was. The other side, honestly, is maybe the over dealing with conflict. It's like, I'm just gonna step in and put the hammer down and end it and then there'll be peace, you know? And then it'll be done with. That's like the enforcer. That's the enforcer side of...

Chris: Mm-hmm. That's called being a bully, but that's the enforcer side, yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be my way or no way.

Jacob Creighton: ⁓ peacemaking. But in some people's mind, I think that's how it is. Like, man, it's all going crazy. I gotta put a stop to this. Bam. And then it's like, everyone's quiet, so it's peaceful. ⁓ But that's not what the definition we're working with is. ⁓ You said that peacemaking is the active work of restoring what brokenness has torn apart.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: by reweaving God's shalom wherever he's placed us.

Chris: Mm-hmm. It's a lot.

Jacob Creighton: So peacemaking is the active work of restoring what brokenness has torn apart, and how do you do that active work? You do it by reweaving God's shalom wherever He's placed you. ⁓ So when Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers, ⁓ He said that He's kind of making up a word on the spot. Kind of tell us about that.

Chris: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I mean it it it he says, Blessed are the peacemakers, and there was no other example of this in scripture. You know, I usually like when I'm doing my word studies, I'll look and see where that particular word was used, either in its its Greek form in the New Testament or its Hebrew equivalent in the Old Testament.

Jacob Creighton: Right. Right.

Chris: There was no like compound peacemaker word that was used, and so Jesus is saying this, and people are like, huh, okay, write that down, you know. And you know, he's using, but to to pull apart this peacemaker compound word, he's using just a typical word for peace here, ⁓ which is irene, the Greek word, and then poieo, which is the the the Greek word for to make or to create or to do, and so he's literally saying here, making it very clear.

Jacob Creighton: Wow, all right.

Chris: Blessed are the people that make peace, peacemakers, not peacekeepers, not those that watch peace happen, but the peacemakers. And so kind of had to like track that back some to say, okay, so what is the significance of this? And if you look at Irene peace in the Greek, the Hebrew equivalent to that is shalom. And that beautiful word shalom, which Obviously, shalom does not mean like just limited to not fighting or no conflict. There's this incredibly like deep meaning ⁓ to that the that the Hebrew people that the that God's people would have understood when they said shalom, even today, when you know we're we live in an area that that has a very large Jewish population. And so you'll hear on Fridays and Saturdays them saying to each other Shabbat Shalom and wishing them Shabbat Shalom and Shalom is is not just the absence of conflict or the avoidance of conflict. It's wholeness or its flourishing, it's restoration, it's harmony, ⁓ completeness. And I loved this, things as they ought to be. And so that kind of led me to think, where were the where were things as they ought to be in scripture? And the the greatest essence of that was in the Garden of Eden.

Jacob Creighton: Right. how should things ought to be.

Chris: And how did that ought to be get there? It was because God created it. And so actually you you track Poeo, the which is the Hebrew equivalent of Poieo, you track that back and when was it first used? It was used in Genesis 1-1 for God created, God made, God did the heavens and the earth.

Jacob Creighton: Hmm.

Chris: And then that po'eo, the Hebrew equivalent of po'eo is repeated 14 times throughout the creation narrative. God made, God created, God did, God made, God created, God did. And he begins to weave together, you know, taking nothing and making something, taking chaos and making order. And it's just a beautiful example of God essentially weaving together shalom. God, God making.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: Shalom things the way they ought to be.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. We've been doing this a lot in this series, ⁓ kind of taking the Beatitude and then ⁓ finding just a spot in scripture where we see this on display very clearly. And I love where you took us this week to Isaiah 29.

Chris: Jeremiah. Jeremiah twenty-nine. Well, I'll tell you why he said Arizda, because I didn't even finish the thing, but the the pieces that God weaved Shalom in the garden.

Jacob Creighton: Isaiah 29, so if you got your Bibles, if you're wanting to follow along, go there to Isaiah 29. Jeremiah, I've said Isaiah, Jeremiah, wow. We were in Isaiah last week.

Chris: But we're not in the garden anymore. What happened? Well, the fall happened. Everything was broken. And so we had this beautiful creation that then became, you know, brokenness and division and blame, violence, ⁓ alienation. And that that like weaved shalom is tore is ripped apart ⁓ because of of you know, grasping for control with the apple and what they long for and whatnot. But God obviously restored that and and But it's kind of cool because how did he restore it? And actually drew why you said Isaiah is because I drew the attention of our people to Isaiah 9, 6 through 7, a verse that we really only use at Christmas time. But for unto us a child is born, for unto us a son is given, and his name will be called the Prince of Shalom. And there will be no, no barriers, no end to the increase of his shalom. So here God is is.

Jacob Creighton: All right, I looked at it. Yeah. Yeah, Isaiah's like. Right.

Chris: Redeeming the shalom that was torn apart in the garden. And it's just this beautiful example of how he created Shalom. We broke it. He's going to redeem it to descending of his son, the prince of Shalom. And that kind of like then brings us into the Jeremiah 29 passage, which is a really cool you know, piece that we we get to sit in. ⁓ where Jeremiah is writing to the people who are in Babylon.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: Here they we talked about in the last episode, the people were in Babylon. ⁓ Isaiah was getting after them. ⁓ and here Jeremiah is doing the same thing. He's like trying to frame for them, hey, there's there's something that is is is is happening. There's something that needs to be done. And Babylon, the people, God's people, God who is a creator of Shalom, has his people living in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city of peace, but they're not there.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: They were serving other gods. So they got deported out and into Babylon. And Babylon represents like what we live in: brokenness and pride and violence and selfishness and rebellion against God. And he's like, hey, you as my people that I want to call, be called sons of God, sons of me, that are living in a foreign place, not in the city of peace, but in a different place. This is what I want you to do.

Jacob Creighton: Yep.

Chris: This is what I want you to do. Because so often we stop and we just like see, okay, Jesus is going to take care of it all. He's the redeemer, which is true. There's no more responsibility for us. Let Jesus do it all. And I think if we have that mentality, we miss this beautiful aspect of the gospel where the gospel's not just saving us, but it's also inviting us into the work that God is doing. And that's what Jeremiah I think is getting through here.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: And so he's like, hey, listen, God is telling us something. We need to listen very carefully. And so I went through some processes. We looked at just Jeremiah 29, one through seven is kind of where we stopped. We didn't go to the famous 2911, which I kind of told our people to be careful with. But I feel like Jeremiah is telling us number one to reframe the situation, live well, produce patiently, intentionally multiply.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah. 27, yeah. Yeah, man, about.

Chris: and seek and pray for peace. And so there's kind of a cool process here. I don't know how far you want me to go into it, but

Jacob Creighton: Yeah, no, go into that because I think and I guess You don't necessarily need to go into it from like a digging into what what all this meant for the people of Israel They're I think at face value ⁓ You know, they're in they're in a place in a situation. They don't want to be in there, you know, they're in a place that you know, they could just live How the cultures live in there and whatever?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Jacob Creighton: But God's telling them, no, live differently. And actually, your living differently is going to help redeem the culture there. So I think maybe taking that and saying, hey, look at us. We're not in too different of a situation. ⁓ How do we kind of take these principles, you know?

Chris: That's it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think we have to kind of consider where we are. I mean, you know, we live in we live in Pittsburgh. That's where, you know, Jacob and I are are at right now. But I mean, everybody is is we're all living east of Eden, essentially. We're all living outside of the garden. And so we're we're in these places that aren't, you know, like God-centric places per se. And I mean, even some of our churches aren't God centric at times. I mean, there's always these different like nuances to places and and it's like, well, how do we do it? Well, we, I think often as followers of Jesus get kind of in our fears and our guilts and our shames and we're like, we're just gonna control it all. It's kind of like what you said, like, we're gonna have peace and we're gonna have peace right now. And

Jacob Creighton: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, we need the incubator environment. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Yeah, we need this set of, we need this group of people here and this is our space. But what? Mm-hmm.

Chris: Yeah. And we're gonna dictate it and we're gonna control it and we're gonna whatever. But I think God invites us into something different here where he kind of tells the people, hey, listen, I want you to, and I love what he says at the very end, he says, I want you to seek the peace of the city. And he says there in in verse seven, he says, Pursue the well-being of the city. And that well-being is shalom. Pursue the shalom of the city. But this place is like broken and it's crazy. And he's like, No, no, no.

Jacob Creighton: Mm-hmm.

Chris: I put you here. And so that's where he's like saying, I reframe the situation. You didn't just accidentally get here. I am sovereign God. Pray to the Lord on its behalf. Pray for the peace of the city. And when it is peaceful, when it thrives, when it shaloms, you will also shalom. And so there's this like paradigm shift where it's like, don't control it and don't like bubble wrap yourself and pull yourself away and

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: alienate yourself from the city, but build houses, he says in verse five. Live in them. Live well. If I in my house, I have neighbors. I love my neighbors. We're to build houses, be like live within the city. Plant gardens. Eat the produce. That takes time. It takes seasons. It takes harvest schedules to plant and produce and eat. And then he says multiply.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: And for for us, he's saying here, like, hey, children of Israel, like, be okay taking husbands and wives, and your children get husbands, and your, you know, your daughters get husbands and your your your sons get wives and have grandchildren and multiply. I think for us, he's saying to us is like, hey, as a church, multiply disciples. You know, as you seek the peace, proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to those that are around you. And, you know, kind of just flips the script on us, some where we're called to be

Jacob Creighton: Yeah.

Chris: like shalom weavers in this like east of Eden area, the space and place that we live. We're not called to bubble wrap. We're not called to manipulate. We're not called to demand in the sense of like we're gonna, everything needs to be this like Christian orientation per se. It because even that becomes convoluted at times. What do we do is we start kind of where we are in our space and our place.

Jacob Creighton: Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Chris: And we seek the welfare of what's around us. We seek the peace of what's around us.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah, this is cool. I didn't even realize it really until now, but ⁓ yesterday I read from Psalm 67 in our worship set and ⁓ Psalm 67 5, I love how simple this verse is. And I think that this even captures this at a big picture level as he says, let the peoples praise you, God, let all the peoples praise you. And I think if you were to take that where you live and say,

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: Man, what if all of the people here, praise God, you can kind of see the gap and you can kind of go, okay, well this isn't, yeah, for me to set up my own little sect of things happen in here and then we're excluded from the outside. is, man, what if all of our neighbors could eventually join in on this? How would I live in a way that seeks the peace of the city? How would I live in relationship with my neighbor? How would I?

Chris: Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: work differently ⁓ because like, man, I want them to be invited to praise God together. ⁓ Which I think is what he's saying to the Israelites there in captivity is like, you're... yes, this is a negative situation. You don't want to be here. But the...

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, well, and that's the thing, is I I don't I think where we have to be careful here is it's like, well, you're just saying we can just do whatever, you know, do whatever everybody else says. And it's no, you're seeking the peace. That's the problem, is that the way that they're living is creating enmity and it's creating strife and division and

Jacob Creighton: positive side of this is the people living there are gonna see how you live and they'll probably end up praising God because of how you're witnessing where you're at. Nah, Yeah. Right, right. Mm-hmm.

Chris: And and we see that in our culture with the way that you know the the the culture buys into things and we're like, hey, the the legislature is gonna do it, but then we have this like political polarization and you know and there's so many ways we can we can go about looking at that, but here we're being invited into an opportunity where no, we're seeking the peace. So we're we're we're we're showing them a different way to live under the sovereignty of God, where He is.

Jacob Creighton: Mm-hmm.

Chris: He is the one that ultimately dictates what we do, how we live. But the the cool thing about, you know, Christianity is it's it's inclusive. It invites people in ⁓ to it. It doesn't demand that that you have to act or do or be a certain way. What the requirement is, is do you profess that Jesus is Lord now? Do you do you like acknowledge the obvious that God is sovereign?

Jacob Creighton: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: ⁓ and then the invitation is is there, you're a follower of Jesus. There you'll be saved. So and then you too now are seeking the peace of your space and your place and your time period.

Jacob Creighton: Yeah, that's good. One of our convictions, Steel City Church, I feel like this is true, ⁓ is that we want to be committed to relational and missional discipleship. That we're invested in each other in a deep way, both within the walls of our church, but in the lives of our neighbor, in the lives of our coworkers, in the lives of our friends in the city family.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: And those things overlap. Relational and missional discipleship, we could see that those lines cross and there's not necessarily even a huge distinction where you go, okay, no, inside the church is relational and then out there is missional. It's like, no, this might bleed over a little bit. ⁓ And that's the beauty of it. So ⁓ any thoughts on just that conviction? Yeah.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean I think that's Well, that's the piece of it, is it's not just you being a peacemaker. It's it's like us as a as a congregation. And so we're invited in this process and we're always invited in this process together. And that that's the crazy thing that I think so often gets misconstrued with Christianity is it's like, well, I can I am a Christian, but Christ would not know of a Christian that's in isolation. Like that just doesn't make sense. There's there's always a communal aspect to it. So there's a relational aspect. And so when we're when we're talking together as followers of Jesus, it's like a peacemaking mission. It's a peacemaking endeavor. When we're sharpening each other, when we're confessing to one another, when we're challenging one another, when we're giving each other feedback about the way that we live our lives. We live well, we build, we produce, we multiply. It's a it's a relational peacemaking endeavor.

Jacob Creighton: Mm. Yeah, for sure. Mm-hmm.

Chris: But when, you know, we say often we're we exist to learn and live the ways of Jesus. Well, as we learn the ways of Jesus, there's an action there. We go live the ways of Jesus. And so there's a missional aspect where it goes out from where we are right now. And that's why we seek the peace of the city. We seek the peace of our space and place where we are, because that's what we're called to do. Go therefore and make disciples. Go therefore and multiply intentionally.

Jacob Creighton: Right? Yeah. One final question. This is for everybody listening. ⁓ Question you left us with. What is the peacemaking step you need to commit to take today? What is the peacemaking step you need to take today? Is it making a phone call? Is it apologizing? Is it?

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jacob Creighton: Forgiving someone, inviting your neighbor over, opening your table, praying for your city, joining discipleship at Steel City Church or wherever you're at. Is it to disciple somebody? Is it to invest relationally? What is the peacemaking step you need to commit to take today? ⁓ Yeah. What is it? So maybe write that down. ⁓ Chris gave us a number to text on Sunday. Do you want to give them the number or no? Number, church number. If you want to send it to the number, what's your peacemaking step? If this helps you. The number you can text is 412-342-8387. What's your peacemaking step you need to commit to take? Today we'd love to hear from you. Yeah. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Chris: Let's do it. Yeah, it's a church number. Says public.

Jacob Creighton: I always, for they will be called sons of God. I was like scrolling up to, blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God. I wanted to get it right. Yeah, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time on the Forum Podcast. See ya.

Chris: For they shall be called sons of God. That's right. I'll see you soon.