Blessed Are The Peacemakers | Rev. Josh Landen

From Matthew 5.

He writes, Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

His disciples came to him and he began to teach them.

He said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

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

This is the word of God for the people of God, and we say, thanks be to God.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, what we do not know, by your Spirit, teach us.

Lord, and what we do not have.

Out of your grace, give us.

And God, what we are not, make us.

For your son's sake.

Amen.

But uh welcome to worship, guys.

My name is Josh Landon.

I get to serve as the executive pastor here and currently as interim lead pastor.

And uh and I sit here and I or I stand here and I see these moms from last week.

I hope that you were able to join us as we as we uh prayed for Paul and blessed Paul and thanked God for Paul and Missy's uh leadership here.

And I just want to acknowledge that that it's okay that there's a little bit of a sense of grief, but I also want to acknowledge what we just sang, that God will provide for us and that our trust is in him, and that our good shepherd hasn't let us even left us, even though temporal leaders may come and go, and that includes me and and everybody else on staff one day, but that God's promises uh remain steadfast uh and that he is with us.

So we give thanks for Paul.

We what love is is willing the good of others, and we love the church, and we want the church to be blessed by his leadership and his giftings and capabilities.

And uh, and as I said last week, what uh he has done for us uh and with us, uh we pray that he'll be able to bless hundreds and thousands of other churches through that.

So uh so it's an honor to send him off.

He is uh he is worthy of that call.

We have been blessed by by his ministry here, just as we will be blessed by the next person that comes.

So uh I will to ask you to continue to pray for us and the staff.

We have a very strong staff, we have a very strong lay leadership who is uh assisting in the direction of the church, and we have a strong and committed and and most importantly, faithful and godly and devout search committee uh who are praying and fasting and discerning for who that next leader might be.

And uh and I'm excited for uh for that time uh when he or she is identified and brought to us.

But right now, we are in the Beatitudes, and so I want to ask, what is peace?

What is peace?

To the people that heard Jesus talking about this, they were living in a time called the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, where peace was enforced.

It was it was laid over the people because of a strong political and military power.

Rome controlled the Mediterranean, including the Middle East, and there was a time for a couple hundred years of a relative absence of war.

But the result of that was that there was just uh a rise in political zealots uh who wanted to fight them and push them out anyway.

There wasn't really peace, there was just a lack of conflict.

God's peace cannot be enforced or pressed upon or handed down.

God's peace has to come from him and be lived out.

And it is never just the absence of trouble, but it's everything which makes for a person's highest and best good.

You've heard the Hebrew term shalom, that's what it is.

It's not just that there's a lack of conflict, but it's a it's a positive action where things are working in someone's favor.

It's the presence of good things and not just the absence of bad things.

Peacemaking is beyond being just peaceable and peaceful, it is actively working to reconcile alienated people.

Peacemaking is not just living in peace and not just enjoying the fruits of peace, but it's being devoted to the hard work of creating peace where it doesn't yet exist.

Peacemaking is being devoted from taking retaliation and turning it into reconciliation.

Peacemaking is different from peacekeeping.

Peacemaking and peacekeeping may just be peacekeeping is just giving somebody an apple when you're eating one and you're sharing it with them.

But peacemaking is growing an apple tree, creating an orchard to share with others who don't have it.

If you look around the world today, there is no peace to be found, or when it is found, it's fleeting.

There's no peace between people.

You look at the news, open your app, or go online, read the news, watch the TV, what do we see?

We see crime, competition, and strife.

And an entire economy devoted to online outrage.

There's no peace between groups.

Whatever their identities are, whether it's racial or cultural or ethnic or rural or urban or suburban or rich or poor or Democrats or Republicans or Reds or Blues.

There's no peace.

There's no peace between nations.

You see it between Israel and its neighbors, Iran and its neighbors, the US and some of its allies.

You see it in Western Europe this weekend, today, right now, there's conflict and fighting actively going on in England and France and Italy and Portugal and others.

There isn't peace.

And the reason is that we are not a peaceful people.

This is just the state of the world.

This is an outcropping of the effect of sin.

Sin enters into our life, into our world in Genesis 3.

And if you just flip the page, you go one page over to Genesis 6, in those three chapters, you can see how pervasive the sin problem is.

By the time we get to Noah, just a few more generations, here's what it says The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil and all the time.

Only evil, and that continually.

All division, all strife, all separation, all war in our world comes from the effects of sin and our letting it rain in our lives.

We had the opportunity to choose peace, and we chose, and we continually to choose, war ever since.

But the good news is that God doesn't leave us there, friends, that he has taken it upon himself to intervene and respond to our problem even before we were able to act.

We call that prevenient grace in the Wesleyan movement.

He has given us a solution for this lack of peace.

He has urged us to make peace with him, and we should accept that offer that he's made through Christ.

Our God is not a God of war and strife and chaos and disorder.

Ours is a God of peace, and his son Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace.

He has made peace for us through Christ, reconciled ourselves to him.

We were once enemies, but we've been made reconciled back to back to God through the work of Jesus Christ.

Making peace is part of God's character.

It's who he is.

And so then when we get to our beatitude today, those who have become members of his family, those who have been brought in as sons and daughters and no longer enemies, those who are members of his family will share in that family likeness.

So his children will be peacemakers.

Peacemaking is the same verb that Paul uses when he talks about what God has done for us through Christ.

In Colossians 1, here's what it says: For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, him being Jesus.

And through him, Jesus to reconcile to himself God all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

Christ is our Prince of Peace, and God sent him that we would have peace with God, and peace from God, and the peace of God.

Christ's peace with God.

Paul writes about in Romans 5.

He says, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we've gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God.

What separated us has been brought back together through the work of Jesus Christ.

Our sinfulness he took upon himself, our penalty for our sin he took.

He was made the perfect and once for all sacrifice, and he atoned for our sinfulness, and by his blood we've been given peace with God, because our sinfulness has been exchanged for Christ's own righteousness.

And so we have this peace with God, but we also have peace from God.

This is what Grant was reading about earlier in Ephesians 2.

He says, For he himself is our peace, who's made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.

His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

When we are united with each other in Jesus Christ, we are united with others in a way that transcends and is higher and further and deeper and richer than any other connection that we have to other people in this world.

It transcends our race, it transcends our culture, it transcends our socioeconomic status, it transcends our zip code and anything else.

I've said it up here before, your connection to a believer on the other side of the world who looks and lives nothing like you is or should be much stronger and deeper than to your neighbor who does look and live just like you.

And so this human striving and contention that exists between these groups, this division between insiders and outsiders and the familiar and the foreign has now been removed.

And we who have accepted Christ are now united as believers in a spiritual family that is higher and better than all human categories, because we're all one children of one Father.

And so we have peace with God and peace from God, and then he gives us by his grace the peace of God.

This is a familiar passage in Philippians 4.

It says, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

And when we have that peace, we can live differently.

We are not any longer constantly at war, on guard for offense, but we can live as people who invite others into this fellowship to experience what we have.

And the flames and the arrows and the snares of the enemy no longer have effect upon us.

Because we have access to our good Father in heaven who assures us that he sees us, that he is with us, and that he is for us.

This has been Christ's entire message, from birth to death to resurrection to ascension, to the promise of the Holy Spirit, his message was one of peace.

When he was born, what did the angels proclaim to the shepherds?

Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.

Before his passion came and he was in the upper room, what did he tell the disciples?

John 14.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.

I don't give it as the world gives.

So don't let your hearts be troubled, and don't be afraid.

Live in that peace.

After his resurrection, the first words that he said to his apostles, and Lucas says, He appeared among them and said, Peace be with you.

Friends, the gospel this morning is that God has made peace with us at great cost, and then he will allow us and propel us and prompt us to make peace with others at a cost to ourselves.

This is the Christian journey.

Justification is Christ making peace for us on the cross, and then after that, sanctification is the Holy Spirit working peace in us and through us to the outward world.

So what do these effects of peace look like then?

If we're going to be makers and workers and doers of peace.

Well, what it's not is just plain peacekeeping.

If we love peace the wrong way, if we set it as an end to itself, then we're making trouble.

We're delaying action.

We're allowing possibly dangerous situations, threatening situations to develop because we didn't act, because we wanted to keep the peace.

We pile up and delay trouble.

Peacekeeping is just a band-aid to cover up a wound, and peacemaking is going in and excising, cutting out the infection to allow the healing to begin.

Peace comes from facing issues, being honest about them.

There's a warning in Ezekiel, it says, Be careful, woe to those who say peace, peace when it doesn't exist.

You're just plastering over cracks in the wall, and when the rain comes, they'll be revealed once again.

When we are peacemaking, we are risking things.

We are risking things that are viable and costly to us because that's what God did.

Peacemaking begins when our hearts and lives are at peace.

It starts in our hearts.

This is the last beatitude that describes character.

The rest of them build to it, and the final beatitude talks about the world's reaction when we are living like this.

I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago and they said, you know, I had always thought of the beatitudes as, well, this one applies to these kind of people, and this one applies to those kinds of people, and this one applies to a third kind of person.

Friends, that's not how it is.

This is what Christ is calling us to live to.

This is holistic.

When you look at them in together, you can see that someone who has experienced a poverty of spirit realizes that they don't have anything to commend them to God.

They're faced with their sin, they mourn over it as we sow.

And understanding that they experience a gentleness and a humility in dealing with others.

I am also a sinner in need of grace.

And so then they hunger and thirst for righteousness.

When they see this, they begin to be merciful to each other when they have accepted Christ's own mercy and grace.

And cleansed by the blood of Christ, they are blessed in an ongoing vision of God.

And so now infused by God's peace and by his own character, they themselves become peacemakers.

You can't be a peacemaker without first being poor in spirit and mourning your sin and coming to Christ.

Otherwise, it's just based on human effort.

It's just do-goodism.

It's just trying.

It has to flow from a purity in your heart.

It's not just a moral obligation.

This is not charity work.

This is a fruit of the Spirit, realizing that Christ's own peace is working in you and through you to live a life of peace.

The Holy Spirit shows us how when we follow Christ's example.

In Philippians 3, Paul says, Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interests of others.

And so in your relationships with one another, have the same mindset that was in Christ Jesus, that mindset of making yourself nothing, serving others, and being obedient even to the point of death.

When we have this mindset of Christ, we live differently.

The world says protect yourself at all costs.

Put yourself first, let others worry about themselves.

Who cares how it looks?

But that's not the way it is in God's kingdom.

In God's kingdom, we don't repay evil for anyone.

We live at peace as much as it is within us.

What is a peacemaker?

It is one who's reconciled to God, who knows that God is for peace and seeks reconciliation in this world.

From the smallest example in our interpersonal communications and to the comments that we leave online to the to the highest examples of our communities, of our cities, of our nations, our states.

When we allow God's peace to work through us, we bring it and we'll be called the children of God.

Now hear me out.

This is not appeasement.

Appeasement and peacemaking are not the same thing.

Appeasement is itself costly.

But peacemaking is costly too.

Appeasement is cheap, appeasement is easy, but peacemaking is costly.

It was costly for God.

He put his own son on the cross.

And it should be and will be costly for us too.

The work of reunion, the work of reconciliation is hard work.

It is difficult work.

It costs us something, but it's worthy work.

It is practical holiness in action.

When we commit ourselves to peacemaking, we'll be called the children of God.

Here's what that means in Hebrew.

The idea of uh adjectives aren't really a big idea in Hebrew.

Uh and so when they want to describe somebody, they will say they are a son of, and then that attribute.

You'll remember Barnabas was called a son of encouragement.

Means he's an encouraging person.

Jesus called James and John the sons of thunder because they were chaotic and impetuous.

Remember, they always wanted to fight, it seemed like.

When we're called the sons of God, the children of God, it means that we will have those same attributes of God.

We will be like God, that this is who God is, and this is what God did, and so we will be like him when we do the same thing.

When you see how Paul closes his letter to the Corinthian church, his second letter, or his third letter actually, but when you see how he closes that letter, when you see how he closes most of his letters, it is a bidding for them to be people of peace.

Second Corinthians thirteen, finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice, strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, and live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Peacemakers are the ones who go in between God and the chaos and the strife and the war of this world, and they bring them back together.

In my refrigerator is a uh a little vase, a little jar that looks like this.

It's called a cruette.

Anybody know what a cruet is?

Have you seen these before?

Maybe some of y'all have those.

So in my fridge, we use that for salad justing.

That's what most they're designed for.

And so you pour in oil, you pour in vinegar, you pour in spices or whatever, however you want to make it.

And you've got it, they're ready for you.

But the oil and the vinegar don't mix.

You pull it out of the out of the door in the fridge, and you've got the oil.

Oil and vinegar separated.

Now you can shake it up and pour it out on your salad, but after a minute or two, it separates back out.

Oil and vinegar don't mix.

They are chemically different, right?

They they don't connect.

You can't make a solution or a mixture out of them.

They resist it.

Unless you have something called an emulsifier.

Emulsifier is a the most common one is an egg.

There are others.

But the emulsifier chemically connects the oil and the vinegar and brings them back together.

You put in something like a blended egg, in with the oil and vinegar, you beat it up a little bit, and suddenly it comes together and it doesn't break.

It doesn't split back out.

We are called to be those connectors.

We are called to find those places where there are different groups that are not mixing and bring them together.

We are to find those places where there are people who are not mixing and involved or exposed to a life of God and bring the gospel to them.

We're called to be reconcilers.

We're called to be mediators and advocates, showing them God's way by entering into their strife and into their life and being who God has called us to be.

Allowing God to work in us and through us so that we can show them peace and so that we can spread peace so that we can work for peace.

That is a final commandment in the book of Hebrews.

It says, make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy.

Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

Being a peacemaker is holy work because it's the same work that God Himself did in and through Christ.

The gospel of this morning, because he has made peace with us at great cost, we will make peace with others at a cost to ourselves.

And so how do we respond to this?

Well, if peace is the highest good for someone else, if it is being reconciled with God and man, if you are a believer, this call is to allow God to work through you, to give yourself over fully to Christ, to let the Holy Spirit change you from the inside out, put the mind of Christ in you so that you can be a peacemaker in your world, in your office, in your neighborhood, to allow the Holy Spirit to change your character into one that is increasingly peacemaking, to strengthen you to recognize when peace doesn't exist and to give you the courage to step into it and to speak into it and to act into it, to lead you into those places where you are risking pain to pursue peace, to aggressively pursue peace.

And I don't mean with hostility, I don't mean with with with anger or malice, I mean with tenacity.

To enter into where there are warring parties for the purpose of bringing about reconciliation and peace.

To allow God to work through you, to show a love that transcends the differences or that permits people to join together despite those differences.

And friends, the good news is that the church is making it easy for you.

We are already talking about our mission trips for next year.

There are places where you can do this around the world.

You can go and build homes for people that don't have homes, for people that are poor.

You can care for refugees, you can bring health care to people that are ill, you can care for those who need to hear the gospel and spread the event spread evangelism, spread the gospel efforts, and build churches on any number of continents.

We have those groups that are already forming for next year.

I invite you to pray how you might do that.

But you might say, Josh, that's that's that's a that's a big jump.

I'm not ready for that.

Can't do that yet.

That's fine.

We have dozens of mission partners right here in the city, some of whom we have aligned with over the last year or two, some of whom we have been a part of for 30, 40 years or more.

So where is it that you want to bring bring peace where there's strife?

Is it to homelessness?

Is it to hunger?

Is it to refugees?

Is it to childhood literacy?

Is it to foster care?

Is it to people that are in incarceration?

Friends, we have an opportunity to be the church and to be peacemakers.

And so right now I want to invite to the to the stage PJ Moore.

PJ Moore is part of World Relief, and he's going to share with us one specific way this week that we can get involved and that we can be bridge builders, we can be peacemakers here in Memphis.

Welcome, PJ.

Yeah, thanks, Pastor Josh.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah, as he said, my name is PJ Moore.

I'm the executive director at World Relief Memphis.

At World Relief, our mission is to boldly engage the world's greatest crises in partnership with the church.

And I want to first just start by saying to you, Christ Church, thank you for the ways that you've partnered with us in engaging crises around the world right here in Memphis.

You've been doing that for 14 years with us here in Memphis.

Um, you all helped invite our office to open here in Memphis 14 years ago.

And you've supported us through volunteering, through your prayers, through financial gifts, advocacy efforts, and through an event that I'll share about in a moment.

But if you've been paying attention, you've noticed in our world that there is not a lot of peace right now, as you were saying, Pastor.

And it grieves our hearts as followers to see that the number of displaced people around the world has more than tripled over the last 15 years.

And you you feel that, right?

You see it on the news, and it's it's devastating.

And one thing at World Relief that we want to do is partner with you, the church, to engage in this work.

We see in scripture God's heart for those that are on the move.

It actually mentions the Hebrew word girl over 90 times in scripture, God's heart for the sojourner.

Um, and so we want to partner with you in welcoming newcomers.

Um, we see Jesus says in Matthew 25 that when you welcome the least of these, you're welcoming him.

And so we have an opportunity to engage those that are coming.

I want to share briefly a quick story of a peacemaker that has engaged with us at World Relief.

His name is Rodney.

Rodney was in a friend of ours.

He goes to church in East Memphis, and really his worldview around immigration and the newcomers in our city was really shaped by culture.

And he began to lean in and explore what scriptures, the scriptures had to say about welcoming the sojourner in our midst.

And God began to soften his heart.

And he chose to respond and take that act of courage and become a bit uncomfortable for the sake of the gospel and began to volunteer with World Relief as a van driver for two hours a week.

And in that time, he really experienced transformation and he got to walk alongside men and women on their way to English class and build relationships with them.

And his he'll tell you, his life has been changed.

And in doing so, he's really bringing peace and hope to families that are rebuilding their lives here in Memphis.

And that's my invitation to all of you.

Wherever you feel called, wherever you feel engaged in the city, take that step of courage.

Uh I'll I'll say this.

We did, I sat down with Bob Whitsit maybe two months ago, and we were looking at dates on when World Relief would come and share about our ministry and the Memphis Cup of Nations, which I'll speak about in a moment.

And I said, Hey, you know, what makes sense?

He said, Well, just there's here are the open dates.

And we didn't look at the sermon series, we didn't look at the topics week by week, but here we are talking, and I've got a slide about the lack of peace that there is around the world.

And we invite you to engage wherever God is calling you as peacemakers and seeking reconciliation in our community.

God uh wants to partner with you in that ministry of reconciliation and peacemaking.

So, lastly, I'll share this: a really practical way for you all to engage with World Relief and really engage the nations in our city is through an event that you've helped organize as a church through through sponsorship and through volunteerism and through staff leadership, even for the last 14 years.

And that's the Memphis Cup of Nations.

This next Saturday, October 24th at Bellevue Baptist, we're going to have an international soccer tournament.

We've been doing this for about 14 years now.

It's like a mini World Cup where we bring together 16 teams from 16 different countries from athletes from all around the world that now call Memphis home.

And they play a soccer tournament.

And this year, for the first time, we're seeking to expand that to an international festival with international food, with cultural performances and bounce houses for kids and kids' soccer games, really building on the momentum of the World Cup this year.

And this is really a place to engage the nations in Memphis, right?

You can you can begin a relationship with someone new to Memphis and capture a vision for what God is doing in our city.

And so you're invited.

It's a free family event.

The doors open at nine.

The parade of flags starts at 10 a.m.

We'll have a prayer and we'll begin playing some soccer and caring for and loving our neighbors.

So, Christ Church, thank you again for your partnership.

We're so grateful for you, for your prayers, for your support over the years, and look forward to seeing you next Saturday.

Thank you.

Thank you, PJ.

PJ and Bob will be here at the end of the service.

And if you have more questions, uh we invite you to consider uh that is a good and fun and easy way to begin to support others and to be makers of peace here in Memphis and beyond.

But those are for believers.

If you are a non-believer, then let me give you a different challenge.

Uh let me ask, are you suffering from a restless heart?

Do you need peace in your life?

Are you aware of your need for a savior?

This the thing that we're talking about, peacemaking, this is unnatural.

It doesn't come out of working harder and just rededicating ourselves and our and and devoting our efforts to it.

It's holy work where we have a renewed personality.

It is renovated.

It's where we have first an experience of this peace.

We receive this shalom, and then we have an expression of this peace.

We live it out.

So do you need that peace in your life?

Are you living in this world of brokenness and wondering where, my goodness, where is the relief?

Are you wondering where is the peace?

Are you tired of striving by your own physical and mental and spiritual effort?

Friends, let me invite you to come home.

Find rest and peace in Christ, and let him exchange your life for his and give you his own peace.

If you want release, not just from the penalty of sin, but from the power of sin, from the things that are besetting you, he will offer it to you and he will give it to you.

Succome to Christ.

He will forgive you, he will empower you for holy living, he will make you an instrument of this peace in this world.

He will call you a child of God and allow you to bring heaven's kingdom down to earth, letting it rain in your life, in your circle, in your circumstances, and in all those that are around you.

One of the things that we are doing here in this interim season is just making sure that there is a constant and a consistent pastoral presence in each of our services.

So for each service, unless unless there were other pastoral duties assigned, today Pastor Brad and Pastor Hannah are down in the other service leading that service.

But every week you'll see Pastor Brad, Pastor Hannah, Pastor Grant, Daniel, Ava, myself in here.

And we don't always say it, but these altars are always open.

If you've got a burden on your heart, come and pray.

Let it be released.

If you would like someone to pray with you, just raise your hand.

And we will be watching and ready and waiting to pray.

Friends, if you have not given your life to Christ, if you are still seeking that peace which passes all understanding, right now is the time to do it.

Let's pray.

For these holy words from your Son Jesus Christ.

God, we thank you for this offer of working through us, of giving us your peace and letting us be peacemakers.

God, I pray for this faithful church that we continue, we continue in the long heritage of building peace in this community and around the world.

I pray, Lord, that we don't shirk back from this responsibility, but that your love and your grace and your mercy flows through us so that we can show others how great and good and loving you are.

God, for the one who doesn't know you, I pray right now that by your Holy Spirit that you pierce their hearts, Lord.

Remind them of your goodness, give them the faith and courage to step out and trust you and to begin a new life today.

Lord, thank you for making peace with us and empowering us to make peace with others.

In the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen.