ATTN: Robert Ketchum tells about a Sunday school teacher who asked her group of children if any of them could quote the entire twenty-third psalm. A little four-and-a-half-year-old girl raised her hand. The little girl came to the podium, faced the class, made a little bow, and said: “The Lord is my shepherd, that’s all I want.” She then bowed again and sat down. Now, she may have overlooked a few verses, but I think that little girl captured David’s heart in Psalm 23. Not only ps. 23, but also the essence of the beatitudes. “I’m blessed when I have God. If I have God and nothing else, I have everything. When I have everything but not God, I have nothing.”

If heaven has everything you ever dreamed of – health, wealth, prosperity, etc, but didn’t have God, would you want to go there? For me, that would be like offering me an all expenses-paid trip to Disneyland with the stipulation that I cannot take my family with me. What is the point of Disneyland if I can’t take my family along? What makes Disneyland fun is not the lights, sounds and rides there, frankly they make me dizzy, it’s hot and the lines are too long, but it’s seeing my family spending time together and making memories that make it fun. I’d rather go to a local zoo with my family than go to Disneyland without my family.  Heaven without God is like Disneyland without family. No thanks.

That is the summary of the beatitudes we’ve been covering for the last several Sundays. And in a way, that is the summary of the whole sermon on the mount. We are so overwhelmed by the grace of God to make us His children so much so that our hearts have changed and so have our behaviors – we have become or are becoming the kind of people who are fit for the kingdom of God to rule over the earth with grace and mercy and kindness….

And what kind of person would be fit for that kingdom? He: 1) admits his helplessness, 2) is broken over his sin, 3) commits his cause to God as not to care what others think, 4) strongly desire  God’s rightness in him and in the world, 5) shows mercy to those who are undeserved, and 6) has one will. Today, we will finish this beatitude portion of the sermon on the mount by adding two more conditions that will bring us closer to God, the source of our happiness.

 

7) “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (v.9)

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “blessed are the peacekeepers, but rather “peacemakers.” What is the difference? Peacekeeping is passive, peacemaking is active. We must actively pursue making peace. That’s good because we like peace, don’t we? And Jesus came to earth to make peace. Jesus said in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” So, Jesus came to earth to make peace between God and us. We were warring against God whether we knew it or not when we were insisting our own way and living according to what we think is right, completely ignoring that fact that we were made for God and to be in God. Like a prodigal son, we took God’s inheritance – all the gifts and marvel of being a human being – and spent it all on debauchery, sexual pleasures, licentious living, making up our own rules as we went along, only making ourselves more miserable, lonely and desperate… But Jesus, our true older brother, left his glorious home to find us and bring us home to the Father so that we can have peace with God.

            Romans 5:10, “for if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. So, since the only true Son of God was a peacemaker, making peace between God and us, as God’s adopted sons and daughters, we also become peacemakers for the people of the world who are not at peace with God.

APP: All the people you see and pass by everyday – people that sit across your cubicle at work, students that always sit in front of you at school, your next door neighbor – unless they have made peace with God, they are still enemies of god and in the end they will be swept away and go to an everlasting place of torment. God will win this war and His enemies will be incarcerated and they will never get out. And as children of God, one of the major works that we help the Father with is making peace with the people of the world. And that is in fact what Jesus affirms: “Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Why would peacemakers be called sons of God? Because that is what in fact THE Son of God came to do. So, when we act as peacemakers, we are only acting like sons of God.

This is why we make efforts to reach out to the people around us. To search and rescue. This is why we have events to draw people and give them the gospel. This is why send a team every year overseas to help the missionaries win peace with those who don’t have peace with God yet. This is why we send money to Thailand so that those children will educated in Christian context eventually to know and love Christ. This is why we make efforts to befriend those around us to tell them about the ultimate Peacemaker so that they will have true peace in their hearts. We are to be peacemakers.

Now, those of you who know your Bible well might be thinking of a verse that seems contradictory to all this. Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. What? “That seems to contradict everything you’ve been saying, Pastor!” Whenever you read something puzzling, always check the context – as in, read around it to see how it fits. V. 35, For I have come 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 person’s enemies will be those of his own household.” So, this separating – anti-peace – is in the context of what might happen to the family of a believer. Jesus is not saying that He came to make war against the world. No. He did come to make peace between God and the world. However, those who would forsake all to follow Him will in fact face some breakups and abandonment by his/her own family. So, the peace that is broken is not between God and us, but between us and our formerly close ties, such as our families.

ILL: When we were in Indonesia 3 years ago, there was an Indonesian man who drove us around. And we heard his testimony that when he became a Christian, his own family members, who were muslim, were looking for an opportunity to get rid of him – as in kill him!

Jesus predicted that would happen. When we make peace with God, what we have done in fact is to make war against the world and its sin. In other words, by becoming God’s allies, we have made ourselves enemies to the world and its sin. And because of it, we can expect to be persecuted by the world and go through suffering in this world. And that leads us naturally to the last beatitude…

 

8) “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (v.10)

Okay, “that is a stretch,” you say. How am I going be happy when I’m being persecuted??? Because it will be brief but the kingdom of heaven will last forever and it will be yours. I think Jesus knew that it will sound like a stretch in the listeners’ ears and so he adds, “11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Like a mother who forgets all about the birth pain when she sees, loves and does life with that child, so our temporary and present persecution and suffering will be long forgotten when we are on year 2 million in the kingdom of heaven! So, Jesus is not saying that somehow our being persecuted itself will bring us happiness – that would be masochism. But our being persecuted for Jesus’ sake means that we have so identified ourselves with Jesus that the world treats us like it treated Jesus. And that proves once again that we belong to God which means that everything that is God’s is ours, including the kingdom of heaven.

Alright then, what kind of persecution are we talking about? We live here in the United States where we have relative freedom of religion even though that seems like it’s being threatened of late. Here are some forms of persecution…

– Teenagers, if you try to stay pure sexually and stay a virgin until you get married, some will laugh at you for being a prude and tell you that you are nuts! After all, “you test drive a car before you buy it,” they will say. And if you cleverly tell them, “But I’m not marrying a car! I’m marrying a person who saved himself/herself for me all these years so that it will be special,” they might simply hate you. Why? Because they want to bring you down to their level so that they feel better about themselves.

– Young adults, if you don’t go clubbing because you don’t want to be tempted into the party scene, then you might be seen as this uptight, no fun, holy-jane type and not get invited to anything. That is a form of subtle persecution.

– Young moms who decide to stay home to raise their children will hear, “Why are you wasting your college degree on babysitting?”

– These days, it is so easy to get branded a bigot or intolerant if you say anything against the lifestyle of gays and lesbians. Isn’t it interesting that just a few years ago, we, Americans, prided ourselves on being opened-minded and being tolerant. But we have become so narrow-minded and intolerant in that we say, “You are open minded only if you are open minded like us.” In other words, you are open-minded if you accept and embrace the lifestyle of gays and lesbians like we do. But you are closed minded if you disagree with us! And they become intolerant and closed-minded to you! Persecution.

            Now, compare to what our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world are experiencing, these are very mild. However, I think it will increasingly become harder to live in freedom as Christians in the U.S. I fear for our children. But it would be nothing new. Persecution always existed as long as Christianity existed. Jesus said in John 15:20, “A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

How do we prepare ourselves for this? How do we prepare our children for the coming persecution? We teach them that Jesus is better than this world – so that it would be easy for them to give up this world. We ourselves focus on the true pleasures that Christ gives and so that when it comes time, we can give up this world. That is in fact what Jesus tells us to do: Matthew 10:39, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

This persecution bit brings out the truth in Christianity, doesn’t it? There is cost involved. Most people like the message of hope and joy and love, but when things aren’t going their way, when they hear of the cost, when there is suffering and persecution, they think twice. But Christianity has always been about giving up this world for the next world. We must be willing to give up this world – that’s what Jesus meant when he said, Matthew 10:39, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” So, yes, following Christ will feel at times like death to ourselves. We are dying to the pleasures of the world. Dying to fame, glitz, comfort, and reputation that the world values.

ILL: This was made clear to me when I was 17 years old and contemplating becoming a Christian. I knew that to be a Christian means to die to myself and to live for Christ. That meant at that time for me that I could not be sexually active. Here I was about the make the life-altering decision and what was stopping me from making it? All the sexual pleasures, I have not yet gotten into, but wanted to explore, but if I were to become a Christian, I would have to give up at least until I’d get married. That felt like death to me. But I believed Jesus’ words that whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. So, I decided to risk my life on Jesus. 28 years later, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. And it’s the decision that I have to make over and over daily. To follow Christ, forsaking the world because He is better. I’m the happiest when I’m in His will