If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Matthew chapter 5, James chapter 3. Both of those texts are there in your worship guide. Matthew chapter 5 and James chapter 3. Last week, we began a new series in which we were going through the Sermon on the Mount, and, we looked at some of the beatitudes last week, and this morning, we're gonna look at the one beatitude, one of those blessed, which is blessed are the peacemakers. Matthew chapter 5 beginning in verse 9.
Jeffrey Heine:Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. James chapter 3 beginning in verse 16. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is pure, first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Jeffrey Heine:This is the word of the Lord. Would pray with me. Our Lord Jesus, we've come here to submit to your word. We're asking that through your spirit, this would become much more than just black words on white pages. But, Lord, we would hear you speaking to us, writing these things on our hearts.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So we're gonna be looking just at this one this morning, blessed are the peacemakers. And you you might be wondering why.
Jeffrey Heine:And just a couple of reasons. For 1, I I love what Jesus says about this. For you shall be called sons of God or children of God. And so this uniquely, this peacemaking uniquely points to Jesus. When we are called a child of God, a son of God, we uniquely point to Jesus as the son of God.
Jeffrey Heine:Also I was profoundly shaped by a book I read on peacemaking. 20 years ago when I was in seminary, a man named Ken Sandy wrote a book called The Peacemaker. And I have regularly returned to that book over the years. And as a lot of you know, I typically in summers, I go to Montana and I like to hike in the Beartooth Mountains there. And in Peacemaker, Ken Sandy talks about hiking in the Beartooth Mountains.
Jeffrey Heine:And I found out that he lives in Montana. So last summer, I was able to call him up, sit down, have lunch with him and just hear from him his heart on peacemaking. And, and it's had just such a profound impact on me that I really wanna bring that before you. And I also wanna be sure to give him credit for pretty much everything I know about peacemaking. If you wanna hear it in a much clearer better way, just Google Ken Sandy and listen to whatever he has to say.
Jeffrey Heine:But I would say in thinking about peacemaking, thematically, if you if you were to look at the whole Bible, you could use just that theme of peace. Peace is God's plan for this world. This is why almost every New Testament letter we have either ends with a peace to you, or it begins with a peace to you or it ends with a peace to you. A matter of fact, God taught his people when they greeted one another to say peace to you. Shalom.
Jeffrey Heine:Which is really profound. What God is saying is that through your presence and through your words, you are to be an instrument of peace going out into this world. It's one of the reasons that I end every service with the words, go in peace. And Jesus says that when we do this, we shall be called sons of God because we point to the Son of God, who is the ultimate peacemaker. The one who through His death ended the conflict that we had with God.
Jeffrey Heine:And so to be a peacemaker is to look like Jesus. Now to be a peacemaker, we're gonna have to begin to look at conflict differently than perhaps we've looked at conflict before. We need to see conflict not as an obstacle that you're to go through or to get around, but conflict is an glorify God. It's an opportunity for a peacemaker to show who God is and what God is like. Hear me, every time you enter into a conflict, you inevitably show others what you believe about God.
Jeffrey Heine:Who He is and what He does. And so what I want you to do is right now take some time and to think about the last conflict you have had. The last conflict that you have entered. Perhaps it was a relational conflict. It was something between you and a dear friend or maybe between you and a spouse.
Jeffrey Heine:Perhaps your husband bought something he probably should not have bought. It was, it was pretty expensive. You don't have the finances for that. And he should have at least talked to you about such a purchase. And you let him know that.
Jeffrey Heine:And you said, you you really shouldn't buy things like that. We don't have the means to do that. You should have at least called me first. And he responded will with, well, I would have, but you never answer your phone. Which escalates, well, excuse me for not always looking at my phone like you.
Jeffrey Heine:And the conflict builds. It escalates. Perhaps there's a conflict here within the church. There's a reason people church hop so much, because it's just easier to reboot and go someplace else than to actually deal with a conflict at the church. Maybe somebody asked you about why you were not at the last work day.
Jeffrey Heine:And you said, Well, I I mean, I I was planning on going but it had been such a week that I really needed to just recharge my own batteries and rest. And the person said, Oh, that's that's great. I fully understand that you needed rest. Not like, you know, I didn't need rest or that the church really didn't need you to volunteer, but I'm so glad that you stayed at home. And through that passive aggressiveness, you really just wanted to strangle their neck.
Jeffrey Heine:But it was church and so you couldn't. And so you just went home and you harbored that bitterness against them. And although you did you didn't yell at them there, you punished them the next week by just avoiding them. And you maybe that's how your conflict has been carried out. Perhaps it's marital conflict or material conflict, sorry, which is about property or about money.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe your parents died and they left you and your siblings your home that you grew up in. That was your inheritance. Now you would love to sell that piece of property, and split the inheritance among all three of these siblings because you honestly need that money now because your children are going into college, and you don't have a way to pay their tuition. And so this was just you see it as God's gift to you. So great.
Jeffrey Heine:I have this inheritance. Now I I can pay for my children's education. But your brother sees it differently. That's the home he grew up in. He's sentimentally attached to it.
Jeffrey Heine:And besides that, he's in a position in life where he actually needs a bigger home. He's got a growing family, and he was hoping he can move into it. But he doesn't have the means to buy out you and your sister for it. But he really wants to be in there. And so you begin to argue.
Jeffrey Heine:Your sister doesn't wanna get into it, because all she wants is peace. She doesn't wanna enter into that. Eventually, lawyers are hired. What is the last conflict that you've entered into? Think about it.
Jeffrey Heine:Let me ask you this question. Imagine if at the beginning of that conflict, Jesus had not yet come. Jesus had not yet come. He had not died. He had not rose again from the dead.
Jeffrey Heine:Would that conflict have progressed any differently if Jesus had not come? In other words, was the death and resurrection of Jesus, is that irrelevant to how you handle conflict? And unfortunately, the answer for many of us is yes. Honestly, most Christians I know handle conflict not any differently than a really kind atheist. And that's how we move forward in this.
Jeffrey Heine:God does not influence our response in any way at all. Or sometimes I find that Christians do acknowledge God, but it's only to claim that God is on their side. God's with me on this one. And if we were to be honest here, we would probably have to admit that usually we do this and we do it this way. We bring in law to a conflict, not the gospel, but we bring in law.
Jeffrey Heine:And by that I mean this, we bring in the thou shalt passages. And we bring in these thou shalt to tell people how they are wrong or how they should live, how they have been falling short. Better yet to prove how we are not and we are in the right. We think that's a point of conflict, right? To prove the other person wrong and to prove that we are right to be vindicated in our position.
Jeffrey Heine:Isn't that the point of conflict? And when we think that way, what we do is we bring in law to conflict instead of bringing in grace, instead of bringing in the gospel. So in the case that we mentioned earlier of the husband who bought that expensive item without discussing it with his wife, she might say, hey, honey. I'd like to talk to you about that. I know you've always dreamed about buying that thing.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? But if you could just maybe take a step back, think about our financial position, where we are, then maybe you would realize that that was not such a smart purchase. As a matter of fact, Proverbs says, those who chase fantasies have no sense. To which the husband would thank her, of course, for pointing that out. So thank you for pointing that out.
Jeffrey Heine:But I do, you know, I bought this because I believe in God's sovereignty. And perhaps I was there for such a time as this. It was on sale. I was there. And so I did that.
Jeffrey Heine:And she goes, yes, I do believe, honey, that God is sovereign, but man is responsible. And you should have shown self control. One of the fruits of the spirit is self control. To which the husband says, you know, I was just reading in my Bible this morning about how wife should submit. Like, now this conflict was biblical.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, that's what they were doing. It it was biblical, but it was only done in such a way that they're throwing law, throwing law at one another just to try to prove that they are in the right, and the other person is in the wrong. But let me ask you, is that peacemaking? Is that what Jesus has in mind here? And does the reality of the death and the resurrection of Jesus in any way impact what is going on?
Jeffrey Heine:If Jesus had never risen from the dead, would their conflict look any different? And the sad truth is, no. It would not. Because all they're doing is bringing law to the table And what they need to bring is the grace and the truth of Jesus Christ. Paul in Ephesians 2 says that Jesus is our peace.
Jeffrey Heine:And the group that he was saying that to were the Jews and to the Gentiles. And these were people who had such differences, they could not eat together, They could not worship together. They could not marry one another. You could not get 2 more different people, and yet Paul says, Jesus has brought us peace. Now there's 2 ways that we typically try to deal with conflict.
Jeffrey Heine:We typically try to deal with conflict either through fleeing or fighting. We flee or we fight. Now I wanna look at both of these briefly. Fleeing from conflict, this is when you just try to escape. You try to avoid.
Jeffrey Heine:Perhaps this is done by just pretending that nothing has happened, that there really isn't any conflict at all. I once found myself in the midst of this enormous confrontation in which, people were screaming at one another, furniture was being broken, the police were being called into this. I'm in the middle of this room, and I've got an elbow in one person's chest. This elbow in another person's chest, trying to keep them from tearing one another apart. And the guy over here who is twice my size, he looks at me and he goes, Joel, I respect you, but I will kill you if you do not get out of the way.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm like, blessed are the peacemakers. I'm like, the police come, they diffuse the situation there. The very first thing the mother of that house says after the police have left, Joel, did you want cream with that coffee? It's the very first thing. That's escape.
Jeffrey Heine:That's total denial. Not a single acknowledgement of what had just happened. Not recognizing the broken furniture in front of us, not recognizing the police who had just left, acknowledging that nothing has actually happened. Hear me. Many of you people I know, you grew up in these super conservative Christian households and yet that was the environment around you, one of complete denial in which you could not actually recognize the evil or the anger or the conflict that was happening.
Jeffrey Heine:It's a hard place to grow up in. And rather than dealing with that hurt, what your family would typically do is bury it. Let's just deny it even exists. That's one way you can flee is just through denial. Fleeing can also just look like avoidance.
Jeffrey Heine:You escape by avoiding the person you are having the conflict with. You go out of your way to make sure you don't ever bump into that person. Just in case you do, you've already played in your mind out a 1,000 different scenarios of things you could do, but you go out of your way not to do this, not to meet them. Your palms are sweaty just thinking about the possibility of bumping into that person. You just want to flee.
Jeffrey Heine:You don't want that painful conversation. Of course, the ultimate expression of fleeing from conflict is suicide. That's the final escape. And sadly, suicide is on the rise because we really don't know how to deal with conflict anymore And this becomes a way that we cope with it. So if your first instinct is to flee from conflict, hear me, that is not peacemaking, that's peacefaking.
Jeffrey Heine:You're not bringing real gospel peace into a situation. Avoidance is not peace. The other natural response that we have is the opposite of fleeing. Instead, we engage and we fight. And this is when we criticize, we slander, we gossip.
Jeffrey Heine:Sometimes we even file lawsuits. We get very passive aggressive or we just get outright aggressive. And this can escalate. When it escalates enough, the extreme end of that side is murder. And so the extreme responses both in fleeing and in fighting results in death.
Jeffrey Heine:But neither fleeing nor fighting are peacemaking responses. Peacemaking brings in the gospel. The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ profoundly affects the way we deal with conflict because it completely changes our goals within conflict. We're no longer entering into conflict trying to win. No longer trying to be vindicated.
Jeffrey Heine:No longer trying to get just what we want. No longer just trying to avoid conflict. Instead, what we do is we enter into conflict and we try to find a way to bring Jesus glory by demonstrating His gospel. Glorifying Jesus is our goal in every conflict. And so we need to stop and pray as we enter into conflict and think, Jesus, how can you be glorified here?
Jeffrey Heine:I saw this profoundly illustrated, by one of my dear friends when I was in seminary. He was poor at that time. He lived in a trailer with his family. Had 4 children. He drove what we affectionately call the lead sled.
Jeffrey Heine:It was this piece of junk that he would drive there and we became really good friends. And one of the times we were chatting, he actually told me that he had not always been this poor. He had actually been fairly well off. He went to a business deal with the pastor of his church. They started a company together, and they brought in many investors.
Jeffrey Heine:Many members of the church invested. And then the company tanked, largely due to the pastor doing some unethical things. And so not only did these people, they they didn't get their money back, they lost a lot of money. A lot of people in the church lost money. Now the pastor was not legally responsible for any of this.
Jeffrey Heine:But my friend just saw the conflict there. And so he went to him and said, we we have enough money where we could pay these people back. And the pastor said no and he left. And so my friend sold his house, sold all of his property, and paid back everybody with his own money, emptied his savings, and then lived in a trailer, and then went to Beeson Divinity School. And I remember just as he's telling me this, just being profoundly shaken by that.
Jeffrey Heine:Because I was like, that is a type of peacemaking I don't know if I ever had the guts to do, But he demonstrated to me the gospel through his self sacrifice. He said he kept coming back to the question, why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be wronged? He was a peacemaker in the full sense of the word. As Christians, hear me.
Jeffrey Heine:We are loved, forgiven, reconciled children of God. Therefore, we should be a people who seek to love and to forgive and to reconcile others with God. No one in the world is more forgiven than a Christian. No one in the world is more forgiven than the Christians, and the implication of this, is that we need to be the most forgiving people on earth. But that's not how we typically think about conflict.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean honestly, this is what we think we're in conflict. We're engaging in this conflict and and even if we want to acknowledge, okay, it's not completely that person's fault, and we wanna take some ownership, we typically say, well maybe I was responsible for 30%, but that person is responsible for 70% of the conflict. And what we wanna do is assign blame. That's what we do in all our conflicts. We find a person that we could point the finger at and we assign blame.
Jeffrey Heine:But thankfully, Jesus did not do that with us because we were 100% responsible for the conflict we had with God. 100%. And yet God did not wait like we so often wait on another person and say, oh well, since I'm only 30% of fault, you're 70% of fault, you need to come to me. Even though we were 100% at fault with God, He pursued us. At great cost to Himself, he forgave us.
Jeffrey Heine:This is part of that radical nature of the sermon on the mount that we're gonna be getting in. Jesus is gonna call us to suffer. There's gonna be times that he calls us to lay down our lives. I'm not saying that being a peacemaker is being a pushover. That is not what Jesus is saying here.
Jeffrey Heine:God still cares about justice. And there are times that we're gonna have to stand up and fight for justice, but there's gonna be many times we also just turn the cheek and we take another hit. Typically, when we think of peacemaking, I think of Wyatt Earp. You've seen Tombstone? Remember what his gun was called?
Jeffrey Heine:The peacemaker. He'd bring out the peacemaker and what it was, it was just a bigger gun than anybody else had. We're like, That's how you bring peace. You bring the hammer down. And Jesus goes, No.
Jeffrey Heine:You lay your life down. You lay your life down. It was through suffering that Jesus brought peace. And if we want to point to the gospel, we have to be willing to suffer. Turn the other cheek.
Jeffrey Heine:We have to be willing to be vindicated not in this life, but in the life to come. So in light of this, let me go over several peacemaking responses that I think we should have when dealing with conflict. 1st is this, simply overlook an offense. Simply overlook an offense. Proverbs 1911 says this, Good sense makes one slow to anger, And it's His glory to overlook an offense.
Jeffrey Heine:This is what we should be doing and what I call micro conflicts. Offenses that are so insignificant, the appropriate response is just to simply overlook them. And what I'm not saying here is that we should just not make a big deal of them. I'm saying we should make no deal of them whatsoever. We should decide not to dwell on this offense, not to talk about this offense this offense, not to hold on to this offense so we could bring it out for later use, we do what I call, quiet forgiveness.
Jeffrey Heine:We quietly forgive. This goes a long long long way in any relationship. I would say, choosing to quietly forgive and just overlook an offense, is one of the keys to a happy marriage. 2nd piece making response is this, Reconciliation. This is when what we pursue when an offense is just too big for us to overlook.
Jeffrey Heine:We're actually gonna look at this in more detail in a few weeks in the Sermon on the Mount, but this is essentially when we go to the person who has offended us, and we first ask for their forgiveness. We own up completely to anything that we have done to have caused us conflict and we ask for their forgiveness. And then after that, if appropriate, we lovingly and we gently correct. And when I say, you seek forgiveness of the other person or as Jesus says, take the log out of your own eye, first, ask for forgiveness first. Make sure you're right.
Jeffrey Heine:Confession that looks like that is this, It never uses the word but or how, however. Any confession that you you confess something and then you say, but, it's really not a confession. I'm sorry that I yelled at you, honey, but you just know how to push my buttons. That's not a confession. That's not taking ownership for your sin.
Jeffrey Heine:You're actually putting that sin on the other person. You caused me to do this, But the reality is there's no other person or no circumstance that can make you sin. No other person, no other circumstance that is responsible for your reaction. So we cannot put a but at the end of our confession. A lot of times our circumstances are this.
Jeffrey Heine:Have you ever said this? I'm sorry I acted this way, but I'm just tired. I'm sorry I acted that way, but I'm just hungry or hangry. We'll combine them both. Being hungry, being tired don't make you respond that way.
Jeffrey Heine:You take ownership. I sinned. Worse than that is when you do the not real apology of, I'm sorry that you were hurt. It's not taking ownership at all. That's just, I got to say something to get you off my back.
Jeffrey Heine:So I'm sorry that you were hurt. That's not a confession. So reconciliation comes through confession and then, if appropriate, loving correction. A third peacemaking, response is negotiation. This is what we do when it involves a material conflict or something about money or property or your rights.
Jeffrey Heine:And we only enter into this. We only enter in negotiation when we have first dealt with every relational issue. We have to resolve all of the relational conflict before entering into a material conflict. One needs to make sure that greed or selfishness is not the primary motivator in this conflict for you. And when we've got those things in check, then we go to Philippians 2 as our guide for how we proceed with negotiation.
Jeffrey Heine:Philippians 2:4 says, let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also to the interest of others. Jesus would say it as, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which we'll look at in a few weeks. So when entering into a negotiation, we work really hard to try to understand the other person's point of view. To try to really understand the other person's need. We work really hard at empathy, if you will.
Jeffrey Heine:And we want to try to find some way where we could accommodate both our legitimate needs and their legitimate needs. But we want to look out for their interest as well. And once again, this does not mean that we are pushovers. It does not mean that we just let people run all over us. Jesus does not say blessed are the pushovers, but blessed are the peacemakers.
Jeffrey Heine:But your goal is to try to satisfy the legitimate needs on both sides and that's gonna involve sacrifice. If these three things fail, you move to a 4th response in peacemaking which is to bring in other people for mediation or arbitration. If it's a relational conflict, you bring in a mediator. This is what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 18 when he says, if your brother's not gonna listen to you, bring 1 or 2 others along with you to go and talk to him. But hear me, when you decide to do that, don't just pick an ally.
Jeffrey Heine:Somebody who's gonna defend you at all cost. Somebody who you know already sides with you completely. We love bringing in allies when we go to confront somebody, but that's not who we should look for. We need to humble ourselves and find a person who will come in and mediate for both sides. A person who's gonna look relationally at both people and say, This is what I see that the gospel demands of both of you.
Jeffrey Heine:Remember, we have different goals when we enter into conflict. We are no longer trying to win. We are no longer trying to prove that we are right and the other person is wrong. We're trying to bring Jesus glory in this. If it's a material conflict involving property or money or rights, then we bring in an arbitrator.
Jeffrey Heine:This is what Paul talks about in 1st Corinthians 6, when the Corinthians are suing one another. And you gotta picture Paul just pulling out his hair, going like, You're doing what? You're taking this to the to the secular courts out there? Pick somebody in your midst. And a gospel believing brother or sister, pick out somebody in your midst to settle the issue who actually has the right goals in mind.
Jeffrey Heine:Don't take it to the courts. So what do we do though, if through all of these steps, we still can't bring peace? If we go to the other person and we confess, but they won't forgive, Or the person won't budge an inch on their position, which is unjust. Well hear me, the Bible is realistic. Paul writes in Romans 12 these words, every one of them is important here for this.
Jeffrey Heine:Says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. If possible means sometimes it's not possible. But as far as it depends on you means, but do everything. Everything within your power.
Jeffrey Heine:Exhaust every tool you have at your disposal. Use it all to try to seek peace, but sometimes you might not get there. I want you to think of this in terms of the gospel. So Jesus died for the sins of the world. So that means everybody has the opportunity to be forgiven and to have peace, yet not all do believe and not all have peace with God.
Jeffrey Heine:Not everyone is reconciled. And there are gonna be times that you make a great sacrifice. And when you do so, you're gonna reflect that part of the gospel as well, That you've done all of this. You've presented the opportunity for forgiveness. The opportunity for peace through your sacrifice, but the person chose not to accept it.
Jeffrey Heine:That's also reflecting part of the gospel that we believe. Not everyone is reconciled, but we need to make sure that we've done all that we can to make that offer of reconciliation real. When Jesus said, blessed are the peacemakers, He was saying, blessed are those who enter into a conflict not to win it, not to get their own way, not to be proven right, not to be vindicated, but they enter into a conflict to bring me glory by demonstrating my gospel. He says, when you do this, you shall be called children of God. Pray with me.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord Jesus, there is no one on earth that has been more forgiven than your children. Therefore, we should be the most forgiving people on the planet. We are millionaires. Lord, we have petty arguments over pennies. You have lavished your grace upon us, and I pray that you would remind us of that.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, and I pray that wherever we go, we would indeed bring shalom, both in our word and in our presence, that we'd be peacemakers in this world, all for your glory and for our joy. We pray this in your name, Jesus. Amen.