The Lord Jesus Christ has been
teaching his church and teaching his people in this so-called
Sermon on the Mount something about the blessedness that they
possess because they are the Lord's people. And we've reminded
ourselves that The people that the Lord is considering here
in these Beatitudes are the same people. These are not different
groups of people, but rather the same people who have all
of these different characteristics. And we've seen that there is
a sort of movement, there is a direction in the way in which
the Lord sets forth the different experiences that his people have. But he is talking about their
blessedness. And whether that's blessedness
because of the internal experiences of God the Holy Spirit upon their
souls, causing them to mourn for their sin, or whether that
is the manifestation of the presence of God the Holy Spirit in their
life, by the way that they act and interact with those around
about them, it is all the same people that we have in view here. And we're reminded, I trust,
for we have sought to emphasise it, that if God calls somebody
blessed, then they're blessed indeed. If God blesses someone,
then who is able to take away their blessing? Our God is unchangeable. And when God puts his favour,
when God lays his privilege, when God brings his goodness
upon an individual, then who can contradict that if God declares
it? We're reminded that what God
calls blessed is blessed indeed. One of the greatest examples
in the scripture of a man who received the sovereign blessing
of God, our Saviour Jesus Christ, was Abraham. And right from the earliest revelation
of God to this man, Abraham, we see that God purposed to do
him good. Abraham was promised blessing
from the Lord. In Genesis chapter 12 and verse
2, we read that the Lord says to him, and this is, of course,
the Lord the word, because every time God speaks, it's the word,
so we recognize the Lord Jesus Christ in this, that the Lord
Jesus Christ, the living word, spoke to Abraham, and he said,
I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make
thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing. Now this promise
was made to Abraham partly for his natural children because
we see that there was a manifestation, there was a dimension of blessedness
came upon that people that are called the children of Abraham
or the children of Israel, the Jewish people. But really, all
of that was merely in type so that we could see the anti-type,
the fullness of the purpose of God being revealed in the blessedness
that flowed to his chosen people, his elect people, be they Jew
or Gentile, that body that were chosen in the eternal purpose
of God to be a spiritual people, a gathered out people, a people
upon whom the blood of Jesus Christ would rest and the blessings
of grace would fall. the real significance of Abraham's
promises or the promises that came to Abraham were to his spiritual
children. And in the book of Galatians
in chapter three, the apostle Paul writes, verse seven, know
ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the
children of Abraham. So the children of Abraham, the
children who are blessed in the true, eternal, spiritual dimension
of the promises of God are the spiritual children of Abraham. Know ye therefore that they which
are of faith The same are the children of Abraham. And the
scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through
faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, in thee
shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith
are blessed with faithful Abraham. So when we hear these blessed
promises, these promises of blessing being given to Abraham, we are
to understand them according to New Testament authority, according
to apostolic authority from the Apostle Paul. We are to understand
them not nationally, Not geographically, not to do with a lineage that
comes through genetics, but rather a spiritual lineage. And we are to understand it to
do with faith. The Lord Jesus Christ came from
the Jews. And in that sense we can see
a tangible, a real evidence in that fulfilment of promise when
it says that all the nations would be blessed in Abraham. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
came from that lineage, that Abrahamic line. And the Lord
Jesus Christ, of course, has been a blessing to every nation
upon the face of this earth. The line of promise was the line
of Abraham. And the nations are blessed,
or rather, we say, individuals from those nations are blessed
as the gospel goes out to them. The Holy Spirit quickens whomsoever
he will, and he brings those chosen, those blessed of God,
into the experience of grace and the conversion of their souls. We number ourselves among these
people. We say that here in this very
room this evening is the evidence of the fulfilment of the faithfulness
of God. because he has sent the gospel
to us and he has given us faith to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the redeemed church in heaven
sings, thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every
kindred and tongue and people and nation. And God's promises
to Abraham are thereby fulfilled. The blessing of God is by faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the promises flow to faith
and are received by faith. And the promises of God in him
are yea and in him, amen. Galatians 3.9 says, they which
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. So we've seen
how the blessings of God, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, blessed
are the poor in spirit, blessed are they that mourn, blessed
are the meek, they that hunger and thirst after righteousness,
the merciful, the pure in heart. These blessings show us how the
manifestation of God's goodness is revealed in the experience
of his people of faith. And there is this progression
from the secret workings of grace, the earliest dawnings of spiritual
life in an individual soul, where they become aware of their spiritual
need, when they realise that there is such a poverty in their
own soul that they can but come and almost in a state of ignorance,
not knowing what to say, not knowing where to go, not knowing
what to do, simply come in their soul before God, poor and impoverished,
famished, in spirit mourning for their sin but the promises
of God are that they will be comforted and we've seen how
the experience of that grace comes to a fruitfulness that
there is a mercifulness comes into the lives of those who have
received mercy. There is a desire to do good
to those or in those who have had good done to them. There are qualities and attributes
that are inspired by the indwelling presence of God the Holy Spirit,
whereby the very characteristics of God, the characteristics of
Christ, the spiritual fruits of the blessings of God are revealed
in the lives of his saints and people. And we've learned, I
trust, that we see this order of the giving of grace flowing
out in the expression of service. We don't earn God's grace by
the things that we do, but the things that we do evidence the
presence of God's grace. And there is a fruitfulness being
spoken of here in the flow and in the pattern of our Savior's
sermon. Grace secretly implanted in a
man's heart or in a woman's heart will issue forth in gracious
acts and God-honoring works. It is this to which the Lord
is alluding in this progression that we see in his statements
regarding blessedness. Now, let us be clear. When we're speaking about peacemakers
in verse 9, we're speaking about these manifestations of the Spirit
of God in a believer's life. We're not talking about initiating
that grace, initiating peace with God in any way. We are at
the back end of our beatitudes. We're speaking about the evidences
of grace in the life of a believer. And so no man can ever make peace
between himself and God. When we say blessed are the peacemakers,
it's not that that maker of peace, that individual, has himself
made peace with God. No man can do that. That reconciliation
is a divine work and it is effected by the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is God who is offended. God
who is offended because of our sins. It is God who has been
wronged and it is God alone who can bring peace into that relationship
by having his anger and his wrath propitiated. We never would want
peace with God if it wasn't for the fact that he effected peace
with us and he does it out of a love for us, an everlasting
love towards us. Reconciliation then is a divine
work and we have neither ability nor inclination to be reconciled
to God. except he should first inspire
that desire and give us a sense of our own spiritual poverty
and our own spiritual need and a mourning after righteousness
as has been explained in the earlier part of this chapter.
In Colossians chapter 1 verse 21 we are told, And you that
were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works,
yet now hath he reconciled. God reconciles us to himself
by looking to the Lord Jesus Christ and finding satisfaction
in the sacrifice that the Saviour made for our sin and for our
transgressions of his holy law. And it's well to remember that
in the first instance our natural inclinations are enmity towards
God. We are alienated from Him. I know what an alien is and it
means that you're not accepted. It means that you're separated
from. It means that you are different
too and that is the experience of the natural man. Romans 5.10 says, when we were
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.
That's an extremely important verse in our understanding of
sovereign grace, because it tells us that we were reconciled when
we were enemies. Now, those who believe in free
will can't read that verse with any integrity, because they have
to say that the will of the individual had been made compliant with
the purposes of God, and therefore when the reconciliation took
place, that person was no longer an enemy of God, but a friend
of God. Well, that's not what Paul says.
We're reconciled not when we're friends with God, but when we're
enemies, and it's the enemy that is reconciled. So when we hear, blessed are
the peacemakers, we are not being told that we are blessed because
we have made peace with God, but God has made peace with us
by the sacrifice of his son. So I'm telling you what it's
not, what it doesn't mean. Let me tell you something else
that blessed are the peacemakers doesn't mean. We cannot properly
say that we make peace with God for ourselves. We've seen that.
Nor can we say that we make peace with God for anyone else. Why would I mention such a thing?
Because we always long to do that and we need to recognise
that we can't. We would love to make peace for
those that we love with God. We would love to bring those
that we care for, perhaps our children or our grandchildren
or those that we have these close affections for. We want to unite
them with God. We want to reconcile them with
God. We want to show them, we want
to encourage them to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. But the
reality is that they are as much enemies of God as we ever were.
And we cannot do it. We cannot be peacemakers between
God and someone else, no more than we can be a peacemaker between
God and ourselves in that first instance. Faith is a personal
matter. And we long to see those that
we love come to Christ and be reconciled to him. but we can't
do it for them. But there's something very interesting
here, because that doesn't mean that we are altogether impotent
in this matter of the salvation of those that we love and care
for. Indeed, it's an amazing thing
that God has done in giving men and women the responsibility
of witnessing and preaching the gospel to others. Now, I'm not saying that women
are to get into the pulpit, but a woman can sit her grandchild
at her knee and explain to that grandchild, the wonderful things
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or to take those that we love
and care for and always be seeking occasion and opportunity to witness
before them of the things that we have seen and heard of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel. We can't change them, but we
can minister to them. And the amazing thing is that
while it is God Himself who dispenses grace and gathers His people,
yet He employs men in the task of doing this. He sends preachers. He sends witnesses. He sends
missionaries to declare His glory. And in 2 Corinthians 5.18, the
Apostle Paul writes, all things are of God. That's it. He's sovereign. All things are of God as far
as salvation is concerned, as far as the dispensation of grace,
as far as the giving of the goodness and mercy of God. All things
are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ. And hath given to us the ministry
of reconciliation. That's an amazing thing. He has
reconciled, but he has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That means that we can take this
message of grace, we can take this gospel message, and we can
preach it, and we can lay it out before men, and we can bring
it to those that we love and care for, and we can leave these
things in the care and purpose of God. He has made us complicit
with him in the gathering in of his church. And that's a truly
wonderful thing. Because you know what that means?
It means that amongst the millions of people in this world who will
never hear the gospel, those that we love will not be one
of them. That's a blessing that we can
take to those whom the Lord gives us a burden for. 2 Corinthians
5.20, now then we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did
beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled
to God. Paul knew that this ministry,
this word of reconciliation was committed to him and Timothy. The writing to the Corinthians
came from them both. And that doesn't mean that they
were going and proposing terms of reconciliation like two opposing
armies and brokering some sort of peace between them. That's
not what it means. We don't believe that salvation
is an offer. that people have the ability
to accept or reject or can negotiate in some sort of way. There is
no negotiated peace between God and man. Man has to bow the knee
and the sovereign God requires that. Nevertheless, we are ambassadors
and we take the message of grace to a lost, fallen world. We declare that peace has been
made in the Lord Jesus Christ. We declare that there is a way
of salvation, there is a way of approaching God, and that
there is a satisfaction that has been found in the blood of
Jesus Christ. We declare the gospel, the good
news that salvation has been effected for sinful men and women. So when we read there, blessed
are the peacemakers, it means that those saints, they declare
the ministry of reconciliation. The Lord's people have the right
to take the gospel to this world, and that makes us peacemakers. on behalf of those to whom we
preach the gospel. We witness, we publicise the
gospel. It is a blessed thing to have
this committed into our hands. It's a blessed thing for us and
it is a blessed thing for those to whom we take this message
of reconciliation. To witness to the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ is the highest privilege that his people have
here upon earth as far as the gospel is concerned. Acts chapter
4 verse 12 says, neither is there salvation in any other for there
is none other name under heaven given amongst men, whereby we
must be saved. And that is the message that
we have to take to the world. But there's another aspect of
being a peacemaker as well. It is a privilege for the Lord's
people to be peacemakers within the church. That's something
that we should each recognise as both a privilege and a responsibility. Psalm 133 verse 1 says, behold,
how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity. This is the blessing of union
and communion that we share together in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
it is a very valuable thing to have. The Lord's people actively
maintain peace in the church and in the body of Christ. We
don't let ourselves be offended We don't let ourselves be annoyed
and upset at little things that happen. We rather, even to our
personal detriment, to our own personal lack of well-being,
allow others to benefit even at our expense. Why would we
do that? That's not a natural thing to
do, no. but it's the gentle thing to
do. It's the good thing to do. It's what the Lord Jesus Christ
would have done. And as we seek to emulate our
saviour, so that meek and gentle saviour who was always careful
and thoughtful and sensitive with those that he dealt with
amongst the body of the church, has shown us how we should live
one with another. Paul writes to the Corinthians
and he says, you're going to law with one another in order
to establish your rights, in order to get what you think you
deserve. Why do you not rather take wrong? Take the wrong. Don't pursue
your rights against a brother in the Lord. Why do you not rather
suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Galatians 6.10 says, as we therefore
have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially those
who are of the household of faith. In such ways we are peacemakers. In such ways we evidence the
fact that God has made peace with our souls and we have the
opportunity to emulate, to copy, to put in place that pattern
that the Lord Jesus Christ has left us. When we understand our
union with Christ, when we understand what it means to be placed in
the body with Him, being members one of another, we should see
the privilege that it is to live in peace together and to make
peace one with another. So that when those occasions
arise when we might take offence, we say, no, I'm not going to
do that. I'm just going to be quiet, I'm
just going to be humble, I'm just going to be meek, I'm not
going to take offence and I will leave this matter with the Lord. There's blessing in that for
you and there's blessing in that for your brother and your sister
in the Lord. We have to encourage each other
to dwell in peace one with another. When I was younger, And I guess this is a feature
of many young people or young guys perhaps that come into a
knowledge of the doctrines of grace and they just seem so powerful,
they seem so weighty and from being a very simple kind of idea
of gospel evangelism where it was all up to the individual
to choose and to will and to desire after the things of God,
suddenly to be confronted with the fact that there's eternity
of purpose here and that God has been working every event
and circumstance in the history of mankind to bring us all to
this place in order that he should gather that separated loved people
to himself and that the death of Christ is particular and definite
and unlimited and all these great truths. It just almost overwhelms
us and we think to ourselves, I can I was going to say I can
go to the crease. I can go to the wall with this
doctrine. And we fight, and we bully, and
we get those who we used to be joined together with in our churches,
and we think to ourselves, I can hammer them with these doctrines.
And we do. Well, I did. I did and I learned
all the verses and I went into the fray and I thought I was
doing a good thing and I don't know now at all that it was ever
a good thing to take these doctrines and beat people around the head
with them. You see we have to be brought
to that place by the Lord himself and all we do very often is set
up animosity and put people into positions where they feel as
if they've got a corner to defend and they become aggressive back
to us and we lose friendships and we lose occasion to witness
one to another. Proverbs 15 verse 1, I'm sure
you know it. A soft answer turneth away wrath,
but grievous words stir up anger. It's a lovely verse in 2 Peter
where the apostle is introducing himself to the recipients of
his letter and he says, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle
of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith
with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus
Christ, Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge
of God and of Jesus our Lord. Grace and peace be multiplied
unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. We make peace. We are peacemakers. We increase in peace. We enhance peacefulness around
about us by increasing our knowledge of God and of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I think that my experience
and perhaps yours has been that as we have learned more of the
Lord Jesus, we have fought less and tried to defend him less
and been more at ease with his sovereign purpose and his glory
and his power to do those things that he will. He is the God of
Peace. And as we are peacemakers, it
is to learn more of him and to learn of his peaceableness and
the peace that he has towards us. And this is the way that
we make peace in the world. When the Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world, the angels sang to his praise, glory to God in
the highest and on earth peace. goodwill toward men and making
known the gospel, making known the good news, declaring it in
the hearing of men and women, seeking to maintain it, seeking
to uphold it, seeking to pray for its declaration, bringing
our resources and bringing our time and our labour and our finances
to this purpose of preaching the gospel in our community. is how we are peacemakers to
the men and women around about us. We give them all we can when
we give them the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's become a little bit of a
sort of comedy statement, an amusing statement when people
say, Would you like to do with your life? Oh, well, I want to
work towards world peace. Yeah, well, how are we going
to work towards world peace? How are we going to be peacemakers
in this world? by bringing the Lord Jesus Christ
to the attention of men and women around about us, by living for
Him, by seeking to honour Him, by praising Him, by worshipping
Him, by having a word in season, by being ready to give a reason
for the faith that is within us, not with a big hammer. but
with that soft word and with the prayer that the Lord would
be pleased to take those things that we are able and enabled
to share with others and apply them with power to their hearts
and souls. Right, with this, I'll bring
it to an end. The Lord says, blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Why would they be called the
children of God? Because that's their name. That's
who they are. That's what they are. We're not
calling them something inappropriate, we're calling them after their
father. They are called the children
of God because they are the children of God. Those who are peacemakers
in this world are those who by adoption have been brought into
the experience of a filial relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and
that relationship with the Father God. We have been brought into
that experience of regeneration and conversion and we see the
evidence of regeneration and conversion in the fruits of our
lives. Such is what it is to be a peacemaker. Last week we had opportunity
to think about a little verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, and
we were thinking about the liberty that we have in Christ. And one of the things that we
said was that we have liberty to serve Him. We have liberty
to go to Him. 2 Corinthians 3, 17 said, now
the Lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. The very next verse to that says
this, but we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to
glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. That's what the
hymn writer was talking about when he said, change from glory
into glory till in heaven we see his face. What is this saying? Let me tell you what it's saying,
and it's extraordinarily wonderful. We are being made like Christ.
We are being made like Christ every day of our life. And it doesn't feel like it sometimes,
but it's true. But it's true. We are being changed. We see in a glass darkly, right? It's a picture of a reflection
which is obscured. It's not clear. It's contaminated. contaminated with the flesh,
contaminated by our ignorance, by our limitations, by the constraints
that are upon us. And yet, and yet, the image is
there. The image of Christ in the life
of his people. So the apostle Paul says, We
behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord and we are changed
into the same image from glory to glory. It's a wonderful thing. Not that we in our flesh are
becoming more and more perfect. The flesh will never be any good
at all. In the flesh there's no good
thing. but in the spirit as he teaches us of himself, as he
shows us what it is to understand the grace of God in our life,
as we grow in our experience and understanding of the person
of Christ and the things that he has done. And we all are growing. That's why we're here tonight,
that we will learn something new, something more, something
encouraging, something comforting of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
as we learn these things, so we grow more and more like him. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
great peacemaker. By his death and by his resurrection
he has made peace between God and the people of God. And as we learn of him, as we
understand his accomplishments, as we experience his grace, as
we learn to know something more about his love towards us and
the manifestation of his peace in our own hearts, we see him,
though imperfectly, nevertheless, in seeing him, we are changed. into the same image, more like
him, more like him, more like the great peacemaker. Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God. Amen.