Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] This morning we continue with the Beatitudes.
[00:00:09] Remember that there's a transition that takes place with Blessed are the merciful.
[00:00:18] And that transition is to the outward relational elements of the Beatitudes.
[00:00:26] There is a progression through the Beatitudes, and we're going to read once again Matthew 5:1 12. We're going to read the whole little section of the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with these Beatitudes.
[00:00:46] We'll study particularly Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
[00:00:56] As we read this passage, I want you to remember that the be attitudes come from the word for blessed. Right?
[00:01:14] But it's not a terrible.
[00:01:17] It's not a terrible word. To think of it that these are things you are to be. These are attitudes you are to have within yourself.
[00:01:26] That's not what it means, but it can be a good mnemonic. All right, Would you please stand for the reading of God's word?
[00:01:36] Matthew 5:1 12 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
[00:01:47] He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[00:01:56] Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
[00:02:02] Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
[00:02:07] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
[00:02:14] Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
[00:02:19] Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
[00:02:24] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
[00:02:29] Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[00:02:35] Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.
[00:02:49] For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:02:56] Please be seated.
[00:03:06] Remember that this section that begins Christ's Sermon on the Mount, which is the first in depth public sermon that we receive in the New Testament from Christ, turns everything upside down.
[00:03:31] For the Jews who were there hearing this sermon, it's completely unexpected. And it begins with this shocking section which tells us that all the people who we thought were not fortunate, not happy, not blessed, are in fact blessed.
[00:03:56] He gives a whole list and we come to this, blessed are the peacemakers.
[00:04:08] And you might think, well, that one at least doesn't turn everything on its head. That one at least probably everyone agrees with, blessed are the peacemakers. But I am going to challenge that this morning.
[00:04:19] I think every single one of these Beatitudes is a shock to our system.
[00:04:28] Now, if I ask you what is a Peacemaker, I am almost certain that somebody in this room will have pop into their mind a large revolver made by Colt that is called the Peacemaker.
[00:04:45] Okay.
[00:04:46] A great big long gun.
[00:04:49] I mean, for a revolver. It's got a long barrel, it got the nickname the Peacemaker.
[00:04:59] It was popular when it first was released and is still popular today. It was released in the days of the Old West.
[00:05:06] So all the gunslingers and also all of the sheriffs, right, all the ranchers and so on and so forth, they liked this gun. It worked well. It was consistent, accurate, powerful.
[00:05:25] But isn't it interesting that the implement of war became known as the Peacemaker, the Peacemaker.
[00:05:36] There is actually a connection.
[00:05:40] We'll come back to the Peacemaker, the gun, a little bit later.
[00:05:49] I don't think that Jesus was speaking about the gun.
[00:05:52] So when Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, is he talking about people who enforce their will on the world through weapons?
[00:06:10] No, it's really not primarily what he's talking about.
[00:06:16] He's talking about those who have done the hard work of making peace.
[00:06:31] This is a difficult work. Reconciliation is another word that is very similar to making peace, reconciling, and it's actually difficult and it's not according to worldly wisdom. Now, Trump seems to be disappointed right now that he was not given the Nobel Peace Prize.
[00:06:59] So it's not that the world doesn't have any concept that peacemakers are good, but what does it actually cost to make peace? What does it actually take to be a peacemaker?
[00:07:19] The elements of being a peacemaker flow first out of being pure in heart, which is our previous verse. Blessed are the pure in heart. Remember I said that there is a progression through these blessed R's through these Beatitudes.
[00:07:41] If you think about what it means to be a peacemaker, you realize that you cannot make peace if you lack integrity in how you speak to others.
[00:07:57] This was the pure in heart having a single minded devotion to one thing. The pure in heart are not double minded, they're not double tongued.
[00:08:07] The pure in heart are faithful to report and to say the truth.
[00:08:15] The one thing that they actually believe, they have integrity.
[00:08:23] But if you don't have integrity, you will only increase the conflict, whatever conflict exists, by agreeing with opposing sides.
[00:08:37] Because you have no solid sense of self, of who you are, of what you believe.
[00:08:46] And so you'll end up creating greater Conflict.
[00:08:51] Unless you are first pure in heart. You cannot be a peacemaker without first having purity of heart, single minded devotion to God.
[00:09:08] What exactly does it mean to be a peacemaker? What I want us to do first is see that this is something that God does.
[00:09:18] I want us to recognize God as peacemaker. And in fact, this is why the verse ends, you shall be called sons of God because God himself does this work also. And so a son of God is one who does what he does.
[00:09:39] That's fundamental to being a son, is walking in the footsteps of your Father.
[00:09:49] It's so fundamental, in fact, that it's true of the Son of God, though he is very God, of very God.
[00:09:58] He does the works of his Father.
[00:10:02] It's amazing.
[00:10:04] God is not called Father and then son because we have fathers and sons. And it's like a good picture, a good metaphor.
[00:10:16] No, he is the true Father and the true Son walks in his footsteps and does what he does.
[00:10:23] And that's why fatherhood and sonship exists on earth is to be a picture down here of what is true in heaven.
[00:10:33] We usually think that it's the other way around.
[00:10:36] And partly that's because we experience fatherhood and sonship down here.
[00:10:41] And so then we begin to look up into heaven and think, oh, okay, can I see elements that make sense from down here, from my personal experience up in God the Father and the Son.
[00:10:56] That's a dangerous way to behave though, because that is very quickly going to allow us to make God in our own image, when in reality we have been made in the image of God.
[00:11:10] Now track with me here. I'm talking about what it means to be a peacemaker. And I'm off on this tangent about being a son. Right, but you can't understand this blessing because the declaration that you are fortunate is because of what comes in the second half of the verse. You shall be called sons of God if you are a peacemaker.
[00:11:35] To be called a son of God is to follow in his footsteps, to do what he does. He is a peacemaker.
[00:11:45] God makes peace in the ultimate conflict, the conflict between God and man.
[00:11:54] And how does he make peace between himself and us?
[00:12:02] By sending his son to die so that we might be saved.
[00:12:11] If the conflict wasn't addressed effectively by Jesus life and death, then we would not be saved. In other words, it is because Jesus made peace between God and man that we are safe.
[00:12:32] Because of what Jesus did.
[00:12:34] We are saved because of what Jesus did, which was resolving the conflict, making peace between God and man.
[00:12:44] Now we're Going to see several elements of this ultimate peacemaking.
[00:12:55] For instance, that it's costly. I'm going to come back to that. I want you to just think through what peacemaking looks when God does it through his Son.
[00:13:10] But ultimately, if we think about what Jesus is saying when he says, blessed are the peacemakers, we have to recognize our first and highest peacemaking work is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, which is to say it is proclaiming the gospel to the world, making peace between God and men.
[00:13:38] This is the work that the church has been given. This is what it means first and foremost to be a peacemaker, because it is the continuation of the peacemaking work that God our Father does. And so if we want to be called sons of God, we are going to be doing that work.
[00:13:57] We're going to be calling people to repent, believe.
[00:14:05] We're going to be calling them to become sons of God themselves.
[00:14:10] This is the ultimate peacemaking.
[00:14:20] That's not the only thing that it means to be a peacemaker. But unless we see that first in this picture, will have totally missed the point.
[00:14:31] Look at how Jesus was a peacemaker.
[00:14:35] A lot of what we think about what it means to be a peacemaker, Jesus did not do.
[00:14:47] He did not take up a sword.
[00:14:50] He didn't have a cult right to become a peacemaker.
[00:14:59] But what did he accomplish? He accomplished peace between God and man, reconciliation between God and man. Now, I remember reading years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, short little book, well worth reading. And one of the points that he makes in there is that reconciliation that Jesus accomplishes is first between God and man, but also between man and man.
[00:15:31] That was a little bit surprising to me because it's like, what does Jesus have to do with the way that we live with one another today? Well, you might think, well, Pastor doesn't have everything to do with it. Well, of course. But usually we live thinking just about what we're doing, right?
[00:15:51] It's easy for us to lose track of the realities that the work God has done has affected us and is being worked out through our actions that what we are inside has changed and therefore what we do is different.
[00:16:17] So living, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out, as a peacemaker, as a reconciler, is to be in the image of God.
[00:16:28] But it also includes reconciliation not just between God and man, but between man and man.
[00:16:36] One of the verses that we can see the Bible simply saying this is true about Jesus is I will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the children to Their fathers, right? That's man and man that we're seeing peacemaking happening.
[00:16:59] But here's the problem.
[00:17:05] Jesus says, do not think I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
[00:17:14] For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's enemies will be the members of his household.
[00:17:25] What in the world happened to peacemaking? What happened to restoring the hearts of fathers to their children? If he's saying exactly the opposite now, this is particularly shocking, maybe.
[00:17:42] And what I want you to realize is that it's not uncommon for us to run into these kinds of seeming conflicts in Scripture.
[00:17:52] And my job as a pastor is not to explain them away on the basis of each other.
[00:17:59] My job as a pastor is to drive both of them home until they reach each other in your heart.
[00:18:07] And they're united. And they're both true.
[00:18:12] They're not actually in perfect conflict with one another.
[00:18:18] They are perfectly united in Christ.
[00:18:28] It requires us to be doing some thinking.
[00:18:34] And I don't want to do the work of telling you, don't worry, there's no actual conflict here, and then just have you go on your merry way, not actually giving thought to it.
[00:18:58] When Jesus says, do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth. And we remember that in Luke 2, it says, the angels are declaring peace on earth, right?
[00:19:13] Good will to man.
[00:19:15] We have to recognize that Jesus is shocking us in Matthew 10 just like he's shocking us in Matthew 5 when he says, blessed are the peacemakers.
[00:19:26] He's shocking us out of our presuppositions. He's shocking us out of our malaise, and he's forcing us to actually think. And so what I want you to think is, what does it mean to be a peacemaker?
[00:19:42] And the first thing that you have to see is in order to be a peacemaker, you have to acknowledge conflict.
[00:19:52] You cannot begin the work of peacemaking until you can say, here is a conflict.
[00:20:00] Right?
[00:20:02] It's literally impossible.
[00:20:08] And so one of the ways that we need to think about peacemaking is acknowledging the difference between it and the fakes that Satan likes to put forward.
[00:20:32] You know how Satan likes to give us alternatives that look like they're the. You know, you're going to the same goal.
[00:20:42] Peace, right?
[00:20:48] This is not peace faking.
[00:20:51] It is peacemaking, not peace faking.
[00:20:57] Peace faking declares peace. Peace where there is no peace.
[00:21:04] But that is not to be a peacemaker.
[00:21:10] Peace faking is a cheap peace that cannot acknowledge that there is a conflict in the first place.
[00:21:20] And peace faking is closely related and sometimes exactly the same thing as peace keeping.
[00:21:35] Now, you might think, well, Pastor, isn't peacekeeping good?
[00:21:44] Well, I would say a lot of the peacekeeping the UN does is bad.
[00:21:50] I'm using it in a bad way. Okay, I want you to understand that there is a difference.
[00:21:55] I need to contrast peacemaking with something else that I want you to grasp. And peacekeeping might be the best way to describe it. It is an attitude of peace at all costs.
[00:22:11] Peace at all costs.
[00:22:16] It's seeing the conflict and then avoiding it.
[00:22:24] Avoiding conflict is the opposite of peacemaking. Because peacemaking requires you to enter into the conflict.
[00:22:34] It doesn't require you to be conflictual.
[00:22:39] It requires you to enter into the conflict. However, until you have entered into the conflict, you cannot be making peace in that conflict.
[00:22:53] And so peace is not always possible.
[00:23:02] Peace is not even always good, not in the way that the world views peace.
[00:23:13] This is why Jesus says, do not think I came to bring peace on the earth.
[00:23:19] There are conflicts that are absolutely essential.
[00:23:26] Peacemaking does not mean universal compromise.
[00:23:32] Right?
[00:23:34] Compromise can be a big part of peace.
[00:23:38] But if we are compromising God's truth, we are not being a peacemaker.
[00:23:49] When Jesus says, I do not.
[00:23:52] I did not come to bring peace on the earth. But a sword, I want you to think of the sword, what a sword does. A sword divides and makes war.
[00:24:01] We're kind of like back at the cult, right? The peacemaker.
[00:24:06] Making peace between God and men required Jesus to bring about a complete change in our lives. It required us to become members of a new conflict engaged in fighting, fighting against sin.
[00:24:31] That is a change, and it's a conflictual change.
[00:24:36] Jesus causes us to turn our backs on the priorities the world has.
[00:24:43] And when we turn our backs on the priorities of the world, the world hates us.
[00:24:50] And it results in inevitable conflict. Sometimes being a peacemaker means making people mad.
[00:24:59] There's just no avoiding that.
[00:25:02] And ultimately, this sword that Jesus brings will be a sword of peace. Very similar to the way that the revolver was called the peacemaker.
[00:25:14] It enforced it.
[00:25:18] When the sheriff said, now you're going to stop, and he was wearing the peacemaker.
[00:25:26] It was enforced.
[00:25:31] This fight is over. Everybody go home.
[00:25:34] Or what?
[00:25:37] Or I will enter into the conflict with the peacemaker.
[00:25:41] Right?
[00:25:43] It's a metaphor. It's an analogy. It's not perfect.
[00:25:48] But think about when Christ returns.
[00:25:55] When he returns and all his enemies are made into a footstool for his feet. And even the princes of this world who are opposed to him bow the knee and confess with their tongues that he is Lord.
[00:26:15] There is finally complete peace because there is no more conflict between this world and our Heavenly Father.
[00:26:29] The peace that Jesus brought in the first place, peace on earth.
[00:26:35] That peace brings all of his people into his kingdom and reconciles them to God.
[00:26:44] And when that happens, there becomes a conflict between the church and the world. And that's what Jesus is talking about when he says, I didn't come to bring peace, but I came to bring a sword. And divide father and daughter. You have to have your number one priority change. You have to be for God and against everything else and everyone else.
[00:27:05] Because that's what happens when you have a number one priority. Everything else is not just.
[00:27:15] Not just negotiable.
[00:27:19] It doesn't matter.
[00:27:24] Think of Jesus parables about the kingdom of heaven.
[00:27:30] Everything else is negotiable.
[00:27:32] But no, not everything else is negotiable. Everything else is gone.
[00:27:37] Sell everything that you have and buy the pearl of great price and value.
[00:27:44] Get the one thing.
[00:27:49] But when Christ returns, there's a new kind of sword that he brings.
[00:27:58] It's the sword that comes for the enemies and says, now we're going to finalize this peace and there will no longer be death.
[00:28:12] Death is the final enemy that will be destroyed by the sword of Jesus Christ.
[00:28:19] Amazing. Beautiful.
[00:28:22] We can look forward to his coming with the sword because we are in his kingdom.
[00:28:29] And so we look forward even to that enforced peace with joy.
[00:28:41] But in the meantime, what are we seeking to do but to bring people into his kingdom to make them turn and repent and be on his side in that final conflict?
[00:28:57] This is peacemaking, preventing them from facing that final wrath.
[00:29:05] Don't do it.
[00:29:06] The sheriff will be here soon, right?
[00:29:13] Don't do it.
[00:29:17] Turn and repent before it's too late.
[00:29:21] Don't remain in your rebellion.
[00:29:27] Proclaiming this peace, making this peace.
[00:29:36] Requires calling people into the conflict with themselves and with the world.
[00:29:44] That's so difficult.
[00:29:47] Repentance.
[00:29:51] And so if we proclaim faith and salvation without repentance, we are proclaiming a false peace. We are not truly being peacemakers. We're simply saying, peace, peace.
[00:30:04] But peace without truth is not peace.
[00:30:16] All of this spiritual peacemaking.
[00:30:25] Means that we are peacemakers again.
[00:30:29] First inside, then working its way out our hearts, out of our mouths and into the world, out of our hands and into the world.
[00:30:41] And so I want to think a little bit more about what it looks like to be A peacemaker beyond this spiritual reality that is the deepest form of peacemaking, and into the other ways that we can and must be peacemakers.
[00:31:02] And so the first thing you need to realize is this might be a bit surprising, okay. Because I've been talking about making peace between God and other people. Right. And when you think about peacemaking, I'm sure probably you think about two people that are fighting and you stepping in and trying to make peace. But the first thing you've got to realize is that it is not always or even primarily making peace between others.
[00:31:37] Being a peacemaker requires us first to be willing to be at peace ourselves.
[00:31:46] You cannot be a peacemaker if you do not have peace.
[00:31:57] What does it mean to be at peace yourself?
[00:32:01] Not afraid is probably the best descriptor. Right?
[00:32:07] Not afraid.
[00:32:09] If you are afraid, you are not at peace.
[00:32:14] Now, there's many other things that are necessary if I want to say, what does it mean to be at peace yourself? Well, you can't be in rebellion.
[00:32:22] Rebellion is the opposite of peace. It is actively fighting against the will of God. Right.
[00:32:29] That's not peace.
[00:32:31] There's other things that we could talk about, but I want to focus on first simply not being afraid.
[00:32:38] What does fear do that makes it incompatible with being a peacemaker?
[00:32:46] Well, it'll drive you into unnecessary conflict. First, fear will drive you into unnecessary conflict because when you're afraid, you will interpret things improperly. Other people's words, other people's actions.
[00:33:05] Right.
[00:33:12] Fear causes you to lash out.
[00:33:16] And so it's not being a peacemaker. It's the very opposite.
[00:33:22] But that's not the only way that fear prevents us from being a peacemaker. It can also drive you into conflict avoidance, which, as we said, you can't start the work of being a peacemaker if you're too afraid to even acknowledge or enter into the place of conflict, If you're too scared of what the outcome is going to be to enter into the conflict.
[00:33:56] You can't do the work of being a peacemaker.
[00:34:05] If you're going to be a peacemaker, you have to be at peace yourself. And for many of us, that's the thing that's missing more than anything else.
[00:34:15] Are you at peace?
[00:34:18] Do you have peace?
[00:34:20] And when you realize you're anxious and you're fearful and you've got all these things that are preventing you from being at peace, you can't then step into and think, oh, I'm going to be the one who steps in and resolves conflict. You will not accomplish it.
[00:34:38] You won't be able to.
[00:34:43] This is the principle of first removing the log from your own eye before you try to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
[00:34:52] How are you going to bring about peace when you don't have peace?
[00:34:56] Now, at this point, you might be thinking, oh, well, I guess I'm off the hook. I don't have to be a peacemaker. Blessed are the peacemakers.
[00:35:06] You want to be one?
[00:35:08] Yeah. It's hard. Yeah. The world thinks, oh, man, that may not be worth it.
[00:35:12] You shall be called a son of the Most High God if you continue in the work of peacemaking. And so do you want to be a peacemaker? Well, let me change the question. Do you want to be at peace?
[00:35:28] Do you want to have peace in your heart?
[00:35:32] Peace like a river.
[00:35:35] This is a gift, a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Right? The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace.
[00:35:46] Do you have peace?
[00:35:49] If you don't have peace, start there.
[00:35:54] Seek the fruit of the Spirit in your life in having peace.
[00:36:01] There are prerequisites in this passage to being a peacemaker.
[00:36:08] Being poor of spirit, being meek, being gentle, hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
[00:36:14] These are necessary for you to be effective in peacemaking, especially when you are an interested party.
[00:36:25] You can't make peace with others if you can't make peace between yourself and others, Right?
[00:36:32] So if you are beginning to see, oh, being a peacemaker means I have to internally be at peace, Right?
[00:36:41] And then you realize, oh, I have to first be able to resolve conflict between myself and others before I can hope to be resolving conflict between others and others.
[00:36:50] Right?
[00:36:52] Then ask yourself, what does it look like not just to be at peace, but to be a peacemaker when you are one of the conflicting parties.
[00:37:04] It's much easier to see yourself being effective when you have authority as a parent. Like, you're going to resolve a conflict between your two children, make peace by just, like, separating them.
[00:37:17] Well, you will have gotten yourself peace if that's all you do, right?
[00:37:24] I'm sick of the fighting in here. Everybody shut up and go to your rooms. Okay? Well, now there's peace in the home.
[00:37:34] But I want you to see the hopelessness of that method of peacemaking, because I want you then to think about, like, if you were one of the fighting parties, if you were one of the children, and some of you are children, who is fighting with your siblings, right? What does it take to make peace when you're one of the ones that's fighting?
[00:38:02] You gotta be able to give up what you Want.
[00:38:05] Right.
[00:38:10] You've got to be meek.
[00:38:12] You've got to be gentle.
[00:38:16] You have to hunger and thirst for righteousness or you'll never do it.
[00:38:28] All of these prerequisites in this passage, they're necessary if you're going to be effective in peacemaking.
[00:38:34] But I also want you to see the cost. I was just talking about, you know, what it requires of you when you're in conflict. It's costly to be a peacemaker.
[00:38:47] This is part of why the world doesn't recognize peace making as wise.
[00:38:54] The cross was expensive.
[00:38:59] The death of the Son of God, that was the cost to making peace between God and man.
[00:39:08] Unbelievable. Unbelievably expensive.
[00:39:12] And what about for the peacemaker, Jesus? What was the cost for him?
[00:39:21] Death.
[00:39:25] And so now do you believe that blessed are. Are the peacemakers if the cost might be death?
[00:39:35] That's walking in the footsteps of the very Son of God? Yes, you will be called a Son of God, but you'll be dead.
[00:39:43] Talk about turning everything up on its head, right?
[00:39:47] That doesn't sound very blessed to me.
[00:39:49] Do you remember in Revelation, the saints who are under the throne, Those who were martyred, how blessed they are. We're going to come into persecution in the coming sermons on this.
[00:40:12] But peacemaking. The cross was so expensive, but what did it accomplish?
[00:40:20] Peace.
[00:40:21] An unbelievable, powerful peace between God and man. Something that would have been viewed as completely hopeless. How could you make peace between God and man when man has sinned against the most holy and perfect God?
[00:40:39] What could possibly be powerful enough to make peace there?
[00:40:45] This is the peacemaking that we have been given.
[00:40:49] Completely hopeless situations. Conflicts that have gone back generations.
[00:40:57] The hatfields and the McCoys. Right.
[00:41:01] What are the clans that are most known?
[00:41:06] The Campbells.
[00:41:09] The worst. Right. The Campbells are the worst.
[00:41:12] Why? Because they wiped out the stewards? Was it.
[00:41:18] Oh, the laments.
[00:41:20] The worst.
[00:41:21] These conflicts go on for generation after generation after generation. And then what? The gospel comes in.
[00:41:29] Peacemaking is not just between God and man, but it's between man and man.
[00:41:36] And now nobody except Ken remembers.
[00:41:45] Amazing. That's truly astonishing that that conflict is gone.
[00:41:57] Are there impossible conflicts in your life that you're.
[00:42:08] Are you one of the parties?
[00:42:11] Or maybe you're the one stepping in, trying to resolve it. Yes, the cost might be outrageous.
[00:42:21] Was it worth it? When Jesus made peace between God and man?
[00:42:29] Did he like the cost?
[00:42:31] No. He was dropping sweaty blood in his.
[00:42:36] His fighting with himself over it.
[00:42:44] But it was worth it.
[00:42:46] Worth it to him, let alone to me. And you.
[00:42:55] What is it going to cost you to be a peacemaker?
[00:43:00] What is the risk to yourself?
[00:43:03] If you step into a conflict, both parties might turn on you. In fact, that's a well known thing.
[00:43:11] The one place that a police officer never wants to be called to is a domestic dispute. Husband and a wife fighting with each other. It's like, don't get involved, don't get involved.
[00:43:23] I don't want to go, I don't want to be. There's the most dangerous call.
[00:43:30] That's why peacemaking is scary work.
[00:43:39] What is it going to cost you to be a peacemaker? Oh, the amount of time.
[00:43:44] Ugh, the energy.
[00:43:49] You pour it out in making peace and then. Does anybody thank you?
[00:43:59] Maybe.
[00:44:01] Often, not.
[00:44:07] Often, it fails. You do the work, you pour out the time, the energy, the cost, and there's no peace in the end.
[00:44:19] That's scary.
[00:44:25] But blessed are the peacemakers. Fortunate are those who engage in this difficult, costly work. Happy are those who pour themselves out in making peace.
[00:44:42] What a beautiful, glorious work.
[00:44:45] You can be a son of God today.
[00:44:49] When you desire peace enough to enter into conflict, to make peace.
[00:44:58] Don't be shocked that there's conflict.
[00:45:02] Don't be shocked when you're part of it, when you're the one they're mad at, Don't assume you're on the right side. Remember, the log got to be removed first.
[00:45:24] Be a peacemaker.
