Do You Suppose That I Came To Grant Peace On The Earth?

This morning we're going to be focusing on a truth that's easy to understand, but it's hard to accept. And that the truth is that the gospel causes division. It's not hard to understand that the gospel causes division. It's very plain in the text that we'll be studying this morning, but it is hard to accept. It's hard to love. It's hard to digest it. It's unpalatable to us. But the fact that it exists, this division as a result of the gospel, is undeniable. It doesn't stop us from trying, but my hope this morning is that we would come to stop trying to deny the inevitable, deny the truth that the gospel causes division. This idea of the gospel causing division is something that's easier to accept at a distance. As a theory, or as an idea, we can say, yeah, it does. I mean, I've seen in Scripture, and I've seen in other places, and to some extent in my own life, I've seen it.

ruffle some feathers. I've seen it cause some problems. But the closer it gets to home, the more personal it gets, the less desirable it becomes, the less palatable. And when that gospel comes into your home, into your family, and it causes division there, the tension seems almost unbearable. Isn't it strange that in 1 Corinthians where Paul's talking about divorce and remarriage, he talks about what What's the believer supposed to do if they live with an unbeliever? And the question that's come to him is, do we have to stay with them? Do we have to stay married to them? And what's he tell them? Yes, so long as they're willing, you have to stay with them. You have to remain married. But you can understand if you were in that situation how unbearable that might become. To live in that constant tension, to have a house divided. Jesus tells us in another place that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

And so it only makes sense that we would want to see houses not divided against themselves, right? And that's a good desire. It's good to want houses not to be divided against one another. That's one of the reasons that believers are not supposed to marry unbelievers because that is the seed of a divided house. So we say no. God says no. A house divided against itself can't stand. But what do you do when a house is divided? Do you throw your hands up in the air and walk away? Paul says no to the Corinthians. He says, no, you can't do that. That doesn't honor God for you to do that. So what are we to do when it seems almost unbearable? I want to talk, before we come to our text, just briefly about this idea that we can't bear it. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. It doesn't mean it will be easy. It doesn't mean it will become desirable. It may get worse.

But you can bear it. 1 Corinthians 10.13 says, No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man. And God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. In our scripture lesson, when Diotrephes is being a punk, because he loves to be first. Do you have kids like that? I have kids like that. When he's being miserable, There's division. And what does John do? Put him out. Well, what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to bear this guy? Did you listen to what he's doing? He forbids people from welcoming strangers. And those who oppose him and do it, he puts out of the church. This man's wicked. John doesn't say, well, put him out. He shames him. He calls him to faith. He calls him to repentance.

And it's not because division should never result in putting someone out. In 1 Corinthians, Paul tells the Corinthians, you should put the man out. You should have already done it. And so sometimes division ends up being cemented in permanently until there's repentance. But many times when we are living in the midst of conflict and with division, our call is to bear that burden until the Lord removes it. especially if it exists within our own house. You won't find the strength to do this in yourself. You must look to God, ironically, the one who brought the division. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? From Luke chapter 12, verses 49 through 53. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled. But I have a baptism to undergo.

and how distressed I am until it is accomplished. Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division. For from now on, five members in one household will be divided, three against two, and two against three. They will be divided, father against son, and son against father. Mother against daughter and daughter against mother. Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law. And daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So Jesus asks in the middle of this text a question that seems to contradict what he said earlier, or what was said of him earlier. He says, do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? Does that seem, and the answer is no.

I didn't come to grant peace. Does that seem to fit together with what the angel said about Jesus Christ? In Luke 2, what did they say about him in Luke 2? That he came to bring peace. Luke 2.14 says, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men, with whom he is well pleased. And yet here, a few chapters later, Jesus says, Do you suppose that I came to grant peace? The answer is no, I didn't. Rather, division. So how do we reconcile these two things? Well, first we have to see that we have to define what peace were the angels talking about? Who was there to be peace between? And the answer is twofold. One, there was to be peace between God and man. But there was also to be peace between men. But not all men. How is it that peace was established between God and man? How was Jesus...

to do this work. He was to establish peace between God and man through this baptism that he's about to undergo, through his death. There was a debt of sin that every man owed to God. Each one of us owes to God. And if there's to be peace between a holy God and a sinful man, there has to be a sacrifice, or there can be no peace. We can't change the currency. We can't change the terms. We can't redefine the debt or consolidate it. We can't do anything with it. And the worst thing that we can't do with it is pay it. We can't pay it ourselves. Which is to say, we can't establish peace between ourselves and God. And so, in His mercy, God sent His Son to establish peace. Glory to God in the highest. And on earth, peace among men with whom He is well pleased.

Those are the ones who will have peace. The ones that Jesus Christ is pleased with. The ones that he's died for. Think for a minute, what's the opposite of disunity? Or division? Well, I kind of gave it away. The opposite of division is... Thank you. You're right on top of it today, David. Unity. Now, that's a good thing, right? Unity is good. How sweet it is when brothers dwell together in unity. And why do we have that written? Because brothers don't dwell together naturally in unity. They're forever fighting and disagreeing and arguing and biting and devouring. Sisters do it too. So Jesus Christ came to bring peace between God and man, also between men, but only for those with whom God was well pleased. Which is to say that only Christians have peace. And Christians also have unity. They are unified with God and with their fellow Christian.

But Jesus says, do you suppose that I came to bring peace, to grant peace on the earth? And he's talking about a different type of peace. There's different boundaries to the peace that the disciples were expecting. The peace that they were expecting was between all men, without reservation. And Jesus says, do you think I came to bring that kind of peace? The answer is no. I came to bring division. I came. To divide men. The way that he divided men. You think, well, what divides men? We're all very similar. And what actually is different about me than the unbeliever? With regard to your flesh or your desires, and to some extent your actions, nothing. The difference is that you, Christian, have acknowledged that you are a sinner. And that you agree with God.

When he says the wages of sin are death and you deserve death, the Christian affirms that and says, that's right. I am a condemned man. I don't have any excuse or anything I can offer to offset what I have done. You are a righteous God and a good God and a just God and you are right. to condemn me. And unless you save me, you are right to send me to hell for all eternity. That is what I deserve. That's what a Christian says about himself. And he never stops saying it about himself. He never stops knowing that he is condemned. And unless God saves him, he has no hope. The unbeliever, on the other hand, has sin as well. But what's he to do with his sin? How does he process his sin?

Well, there's many ways. We could name them. He can ignore it. He can make light of it. He can make excuse for it. He can justify it. He can threaten you not to bring it up. There's all kinds of things unbelievers can do with their sin, but the one thing they can't do is pay for it or atone for it. They can't fix the problem. They can try their best to whitewash it and to paper over it, but they can't fix it. They can't resolve the tension. They can't resolve the division between them and God. They have no way to do that themselves. So you've got two men. A Christian. A man with whom God is well pleased. A man that God has saved. Living in a house with someone who hasn't been saved. Hasn't been redeemed. Hasn't been made new. How do those sorts of relationships go? Difficult. Let me ask you this. How should they go?

They should go difficult. It should be hard. Why? Because those two men, in the things that they care most about and live their lives in pursuit of, are diametrically opposed to one another. They're going in opposite directions. And the more Christian the Christian is, the more obvious that becomes. And so there's division. There ought to be division. Jesus says, you think I came to grant peace? You think I came to die for some people so they could have peace with me so that they could then go and have peace with those who hate me? Those who hated Jesus Christ did what to him? They killed him. And Jesus tells us not to be surprised if we face similar difficulties, similar hardships. How can we as Christians think for a moment that we can have peace with God's enemies?

And why do we want it? It's a foolish thing to think it's possible. It's a wicked thing to want it. Jesus did not come to grant peace on the earth between his people and his enemies. And it is Jesus' death, this baptism that he's about to undergo, that is the division, that causes the division. Through his death, he satisfied the wrath of his father against his people's sin. And you contrast that with those whose sins are not covered by his blood. And there's no way you can cover it over. You guys ever tried to paint over a water stain? You can do it. That's where the analogy breaks down. But if you use normal paint to paint over a water stain, you literally could put a dozen coats of paint on it and it would not change it. It wouldn't change it a bit.

You paint it. The ceiling's got water. You roll the paint up on there, and it's all white. Oh, it's great. And when it dries, that stain goes right through the new paint. There it is. I'll do it again. Maybe another coat. Looks great. It dries. There's the stain. And it will just keep coming and keep coming. You think, if I just put enough coats on it, we'll have peace. We'll have unity. It'll go away. Nope. No, it won't. I'm a painter. I'm telling you. You have to use special paint. It's chemically designed to fix the problem. Jesus Christ, he's that stain-blocking primer. If you don't use it, the stain's still there, and no amount of house paint's going to cover it. So Jesus' death, and consequently his resurrection, you can't divide the two of them, are what caused the division between men. So where does the division come from between the believer and the unbeliever? Where's the source of it? The source of it is the unbeliever's rebellion.

That's the source of the division. In Jude, verses 17 through 19, we read, But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts. These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit. So men who hate God, are the source of divisions. They persist in their rebellion. And the fruit of it is division. They divide with godly men, with God. If they hate God, they're going to hate God's people. They're going to divide with them. There's going to be friction. There's going to be conflict. What's the opposition look like? Well, it can look like a lot of things. It could look like Stephen's martyrdom. But in our time, it's going to most likely look very different than that. It's going to look like snarkiness.

Making fun, patronizing you, insulting you, intimidating you, threatening you, mocking you, mocking your God. Just like Goliath did. What did he do? What was Goliath? He was the enemy of God. And what did David say? How dare this Philistine defy the armies of the living God? And what did Goliath do but walk out in front of them and parade his strength and say, you're all too scared to come out here and fight me. Those who hate God cause divisions. Between themselves and others, but primarily between themselves and Christians. So being a Christian means that you're going to experience division between yourself and the world. Thank you. I almost asked for that earlier. To be a Christian means that you will experience division with the world. But if you'll read our text, that's not the division. That's not the context of the division. The context is not between us and the world. Because that's far enough away that we can all say, Yeah, I understand that there will be that kind of division. That's not what Jesus talks about. He says from now on, five members in one household will be divided. Three against two and two against three. So forget the context of the world. We all agree that there's division out there. Come into your house. Your blood. Your children. Your parents. Your siblings. Your parents. And there's going to be division there.

Between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters, the most intimate relationships we have are touched by the gospel. And that doesn't seem fair. That the people that God has put closest to us, that he would put people that close to us and then divide us from them. Micah, will you agree with me? It doesn't seem right. You're going to give me children and then you're going to cause us to be divided. Just like I'm divided with the world, that doesn't seem right or fair or good. Because we love them. We love our children. We love our parents. So what's the temptation in the family with regard to this division? It's to ignore it. In some way or another, to ignore the fact that there is a division, a great chasm between the Christian and the unbeliever. And who's the one, interestingly enough, who's the one who's supposed to conform in our culture? The Christian is.

The Christian's the one who's supposed to play by the rules of the unbeliever. You're supposed to keep your mouth shut. You're supposed to put up with the things that they do that are offensive to God and to you. You're the one who's supposed to submit. But what are you submitting to if you do it? You're submitting to their rebellion. And in submitting to their rebellion, you become party to it. You become a rebel. You say, well, what's the other option? They're my family, and we've got to get along. So we've got to do something. And they're not going to do what I say, so I suppose I've got to do what they say. And I say, well, only if your love for them is stronger than your love for God. In the parallel text to this in Matthew, Jesus says, therefore, everyone who confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father in heaven. And you read this, and you're like, oh yeah, before men, public. And I say, yeah, public, but what about your home?

Are they excluded? He who confesses me before men, I will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I came to set man against his father and daughter against his mother and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he who does not take up his cross and follow...