The Beatitudes #8

Just quickly about the picnic afterwards. We are watching the weather, and so if it does turn out that it's going to rain or look like it's going to rain quickly, what we're going to do is we'll still cook our food outside. We'll just move into the gym and set up tables and chairs. So young men, grown men, keep an ear out. Dan is going to be watching the weather after the service, and he'll make that call. So he may call on you and say, hey, can you come give a hand? to set up the chairs and tables. If we need to do that, please do just jump in and give a hand with that. We'd appreciate it. So this morning, we're going to be continuing in our study of the Beatitudes found in the Sermon on the Mount. This week, we're going to be focusing on verse 9, where Jesus teaches us that Christians are supposed to make peace. This idea of making peace goes against our natural desires. If we were honest about ourselves, many of us would probably admit that we are more accustomed to

tension and turmoil and strife, we know better how to operate in that circumstance than we do when things are peaceful. When things seem to be peaceful, we think, what's wrong? When's it going to stop? What's the problem? And yet here Jesus teaches us that we're to be peacemakers. This is a spiritual grace that we need God to grant to us. And my hope this morning is that he'll open our eyes to the ways in which we need to grow in this grace. May he help us to love one another, to love our neighbors, and our enemies, as he's loved us. Our text this morning is Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 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. For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. As I've been working my way through the Sermon on the Mount, it's occurred to me at numerous times that the Sermon on the Mount functions sort of like, almost like a table of contents for the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes do rather. That the themes that he addresses here in very short form, he expands on later.

And so we're going to see that again today as we talk about being peacemakers. You think of just a few verses later where he talks about having sinned against your brother and having to go to him and to make peace with him before you get to the court and before the judge judges you and casts you ultimately into hell. This work of being a peacemaker is not something that comes naturally to us, as I said at the beginning. We're not really sure how to do it. What is a peacemaker? What does it mean to make peace? This is the only time in the New Testament we see this.

particular word, sort of it's a compound word that Jesus makes here, to be one who loves peace and who works proactively to achieve it. And so what that means for Christians is that wherever they go and whatever relationships they find themselves in, their goal, their objective, we should be thinking my job is to bring peace, which means that the context in which we're trying to bring peace is tension, conflict, disorder, chaos. I think many times we fail right out of the gate because what we would rather do is avoid the conflict, the tension, the relationships, the difficulty, and say, what I'm going to do is retreat into a peaceful place for me. But the peace that Jesus is speaking of here is not a feeling of peace that you would have. He's not saying, blessed are you when you feel peaceful, when you have retired from society and from others such that you don't have any conflicts. There's no one around you. That's not the kind of peace he's talking about.

No, Christians are supposed to bring peace to those that they encounter. First, what kind of peace are we to make? We're to make peace with God. I said already that our job is to bring peace to others where there's chaos, where there's conflict, where there's enmity and strife. And I want you to know from the very beginning, you will not and cannot have peace with other people, not lasting in true peace if you do not have peace with God first. The peace that... surpasses understanding that we can enjoy as Christians, is built on our peace with God. And apart from that, we have a counterfeit. And not only do we have a counterfeit, but everyone we're around is seeking after peace, but without the means of attaining it. It's as though they want to build a house with no foundation, a house built on sand. And what happens to the house that's built on the sand when the storm comes, when the conflict arises? Well, it's smashed. It's done away with.

And so our peace with one another, which we will come to, is built on our peace with God. And we should recognize from the beginning where David said, in sin my mother conceived me, that we are born, every one of us, however we might feel, we are born into a conflict with God because of our sins. And so some might say, me and God are fine. I don't have any problems with him. He's fine with me. I think he should be. But to say that or to believe that is to deny the reality that we are born into a conflict. We are born as an enemy of God. And however much we might tell ourselves, I'm at peace with God. It's for him to declare peace to us, not for us to declare peace to him. And so to become a Christian is to have God declare peace with you. And part of you becoming a Christian and living as a Christian is to realize and to remember

I create conflict with the God who made me. On a daily basis, that's what your sin is, is to create a conflict between you and a holy and righteous judge. One who's not going to miss any sins of yours. He's not going to say, oh, I didn't see that. Or one that's going to look at it and say, it's not a big deal. God is not one who looks at sin and ignores it. In this last week, we were reading, my family and I, we were reading in Joshua, and we came to Israel's defeat at the city of Ai. And it's an awful chapter of Scripture when you read it, and it seems very, very unfair. Because what happens is they go into Jericho. They come across the Jordan, and they camp, and then they go up to Jericho, and they march around it seven times, and then they blow their trumpets, and they yell, and Jericho is destroyed. But there was instructions given to them.

when they went into that city, and it was, you may not take anything. And yet there was a man, Achan, who took silver and gold. So then they think, oh, look at this great victory that the Lord's given to us. We're going to go up to Ai. And they say, we're going to go up to Ai. We don't even need all of you guys to come. They're not very strong. And so about 3,000 of them go up. And over 30 of them are killed. And they're routed. They're swept away. And they come back going. What happened? Why did we lose? Did the Lord bring us into this land just to destroy us? And the answer was no. The reason you were defeated at Ai is because Achan took just a little bit of gold and silver. And so then the Lord looks on the people and he says, what you're going to do, Joshua, is you're going to cast lots by tribe, by clan, by family, by man. And I'm going to show you who sinned. And so it goes down through.

And Achan is identified as the man who did it. And Joshua says to him, give glory to God, praise God and tell what you have done. And he says, I stole gold and it's buried in my tent. They go and they get the gold and Achan is killed as a result. But not only Achan, his family, his children, his sons and his daughters are all killed. And that's why I say it's an awful. chapter of Scripture to read because you're left with the question, well, why his children? What did they do? Well, we're not told what they do. But we know that the sin that Achan committed was so awful that he was denied even the most basic burial rites. He was stoned to death and then burned with fire. And all throughout Scripture, when you're burned, when you're denied burial, that's like awful, awful. You're not even given the privilege of being buried. You're burned up. And this is what God pronounced against Achan. Achan thought his sin was no big deal. He thought, I don't really have a problem. Who knows why he took the gold? Maybe he was greedy. Maybe he was very poor. Maybe his kids were putting pressure on him. Maybe he was just greedy. He said, I saw the gold and I was covetous. But we don't know any more than that that's going on. What we do know is that he, through his sin, created a terrible problem with God. And it resulted in the death of him.

All of his animals and his children. God takes sin seriously. And if we're to have peace with one another, which we would like to have, we must first have peace with the God who sent Achan to hell. God does not take sin lightly. We need peace with him. And if you're a Christian, then God has given you peace with him. And you realize, and praise God, it's a great mercy and a kindness because you didn't do it. You didn't earn it. You weren't good enough. You're not a nice enough person. He was. He looked on you and made you his son, made you his daughter. Now, it would be easy for us to take that sort of privilege and hoard it away for ourselves and to think, well, isn't this nice for me? God's been so merciful to me and praise God for it. And yet what he tells us is you're not the only one who needs this. Everyone else, every other man, woman, and child in all the world is in the same condition that you were. And so your job is not to hide.

The work that God's done, but to proclaim it. In 2 Corinthians 5, 20, Paul says, therefore, this is coming after him saying, describing what I've just described to you. He says, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. If peace with God is so important for us, Is it not important for others? And do we have a responsibility to make an appeal, begging them, as Paul did for the Corinthians, be reconciled to God? We should seek to lead others to Jesus Christ and to faith in him. As I was thinking about this, I thought, how do you do that? How do you do that?

There are a couple of questions that I can give you that we should be able to answer and walk through with people who don't know Christ. One is, who is God? Who is God? The second question would be, who is man? Who are you in relationship to God? Calvin says that all of theology is, the most important thing in your study of theology and all of it is that you know those two things, who is God and who are you? And that everything else you'll learn about theology is based on those, two questions. And if you don't know the answer to either one of them, you can't be a Christian. Who is God? Who is man? Who is Jesus Christ? Why did he have to die? What is sin? What is faith? These are the sorts of questions that lead to making peace with God. Some of you may not remember becoming a Christian, and that's fine. But some of us do.

And the answers to those questions are what brought me to understand my need of peace with God. And these are the questions that those around you need to ask and need to be answered. And it's us who are to answer them. This is how we are peacemakers. You realize how selfish it would be or how narrow-minded it would be if the only peace that we cared about was our peace with God and then our peace with the people that we love. That's incredibly selfish and dishonoring to God to think only of ourselves, to only work where we'll receive the benefit. And so these questions, this idea, how do I lead others to peace with God, is the first question we should be asking. And not just of our children, though you should ask it of your children. How do I lead them to peace with God? But those that you're around, I'm afraid that too often when we look at unbelievers, if you look at them,

We just despise them. We live in our Christian bubble. We live in our Christian community. We have our Christian priorities. And we look on the world and we go, what fools. What idiots. Don't they know? They should know better. They do know better. When instead we should look on them not with hatred and contempt, but with love and with compassion. The way that God looked on us when the way we feel about them was true of us. We ought to love them as God loved us. Now, why don't we do this? Why is this not the thing that's at the forefront of our minds? Well, it's because it's the sort of duty that if we don't meet it, the fruit of it, the bad fruit of it, it doesn't immediately present itself. It seems less urgent because it doesn't cause immediate tension for us. But what I'll tell you is if your heart's desire is not to do this work, even though there's not a bridge burning behind you, making you do it each day,

If your heart's desire is not to do this work and you're not seeking to do it, then you will be ill-equipped to do it in the areas where you do want it because you will have no experience. Another way of saying it is if you think that you can pick and choose where you'll make peace, you won't make peace because you won't know how because you've already said an acceptable reason to not make peace is I don't feel like it or I don't know how or I don't have time. So when you do desire peace, when it is important to you, you won't know how to do it. Loving the lost and seeking their salvation helps train us to love one another. With regard to loving one another or with making peace with one another, our failures in this area are much more obvious. If we fail to make peace with our spouse or our sibling or our parents or our children, the problem is right in front of our face.

And we might say, I got to go to work. And we can get a little bit of distance from it. But when we come home, all it's done is it's like milk that just sat out on the counter all day. It's still right there and now it stinks. Failures with one another are very obvious because they don't go away and we can't just ignore them. As much as we might try, refusing to make peace with one another will never resolve the tension. In just a few verses after this, Jesus warns us. If we've sinned against our brother, that we're to leave our offering at the altar, go and make peace with our brother before we get to the judge and we end up in hell. Because we refused to make peace. Now at this point, I could make a long list of why we are inclined not to make peace with other people. We don't know how. I've already mentioned some of them. We don't have time. It was their fault. We could open up all of the reasons why. And some of them will be more familiar to you than others.

But I think we would be better served to list the reasons why we should do it. Because simply to say why we don't do something doesn't give us any motivation to actually go do it. So why should you pursue peace with others? One, it's what God has done for you. You would have no peace with God if he had not initiated peace with you on his terms. True peace through his son, Jesus Christ. Romans 5.1 says, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to do what our Lord does. But he doesn't just give us the example of him doing it. He actually does command us to do it. In John 13.34, he says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Now, you're going to notice that there are going to be words that I use almost interchangeably here. Peace and love.

Because making peace is one of the primary ways. It's the top of the mountain in terms of loving somebody, to make peace with them. If you won't make peace with them, you don't love them. It is that simple. You think, no, I love them. I just demonstrate it in other ways. No, if you won't make peace with them, you don't love them. If God didn't make peace with us, does the fact that he gives us food and air and water and wealth and family and all of the other things that he gives to everybody in creation, Does it benefit them? In the end, does that stuff matter? No, because when they die, if he's not made peace with them, they are not objects of his love and affection. And so when John says, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, even as I have loved you, you also love one another, he's telling us we are to make peace with one another. Why else should we do it? Well, judgment waits for those who refuse to do it.

This is not a take it or leave it proposition if you feel like it or if it's convenient. There's actually a danger of refusing to do it. The passage I've alluded to earlier between brothers when they're going to the judge says this, make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge and the judge to the officer and you to be thrown in prison. Now, what does it mean for you to be thrown in prison? It means for you to go to hell. It means for you to be cast off.

Again, in Matthew 6, 15, still in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses this question again and he says, if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive you. And so this idea of peacemaking is an important thing for us to do. And whether we feel like doing it or whether we think we have time to do it or whether we even know how to do it is no excuse. None. Some of the most helpful things I've ever had happen to me in my life is feeling the weight of needing to do something I didn't know how to do. It was the best.

teacher. You have to go do this. I don't know how to do it. Go figure it out. You have to do this. It's imperative that you figure it out now. Well, I don't know how. Go do it. I'm sure we would love to learn in more peaceful circumstances, but this is the way many of us have to learn. That we feel as though there is a bridge burning behind us and we must go forward even though we don't think we know how. If we refuse, judgment waits for us. Why else should we do it? Well, Peace is one of the primary fruits of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5.22, Paul lists them as these. He starts, he says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. And he goes on. And so to be a Christian is to be a peacemaker. It's a definition. It must be true of you. If others look at you and they see you, they say, that's a peacemaker. When there's conflict, he seeks peace.

She seeks peace. When the temperature goes up, they turn it down. How is the question that's on my mind. How is it that we make peace? Well, how does the world make peace? The world makes peace in very different ways than we would make peace. And their peace is not a true peace. They make peace by saying there's really nothing wrong. They minimize the offense, the problem, the conflict. They say it's no big deal. They say things like don't worry about it. I say to you as a Christian and as a pastor, you should worry about it. The world says, no big deal, we all screw up. They say, well, you meant well. They say, well, it wasn't your fault. They'll say, well, at least you tried. Or you had no other choice. Or I'd done the same thing myself. None of that brings peace. None of it. Not one bit of it. So how do we bring peace? In none of those ways.

In none of those ways. There are many things I could say in terms of how to make peace, but there's just one I'm going to focus on this morning because I think it's the most important one. The way you make peace is to forgive. The way you make peace is to forgive. This is the foundation of the Christian faith. God makes peace with us, how? By forgiving our sins. And so it follows that we would make peace with others by doing the same thing, by forgiving their sins. More than anything else, this is how we love each other. This is how we make peace. We forgive. Earlier I read John 13, 34. I'm going to read it again in the verse that comes after it. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. And then he says this, by this men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Now if we were to take a family as an example,

Can you observe a family and see whether there's peace in that family? Whether the husband and the wife are at peace? Whether the children are at peace with each other or with their parents? This is something you can observe, right? I grew up with no siblings, so I didn't have brothers and sisters to fight with. I had friends, and we fought, but it was not like siblings. I didn't have to sleep in the same house with them at night. I didn't have to sit at the dinner table with them. I didn't have to share a bedroom or a bathroom with them. I didn't have to share my clothes with them or my bikes or anything. But many of you did. And these are the things that in a family, kids fight about. Can you see a family that's at peace? Can you recognize a family that's working at unity and peace amongst them? Just like disunity or, you know, tumult is obvious, so is peace. And that's what Jesus tells us here is that by this, men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

Forgiveness is something you can see. It's apparent. If someone is unwilling to forgive, you can tell. You can tell if they're unwilling to forgive you. You can tell if they're just generally unwilling to forgive somebody else. If they're just the kind of person that likes to hold on to bitterness and frustration, it's as though that's what they prefer. And many of us, at many times, that is what's true of us. We would rather stay frustrated. There have been times in my home with both my children and my wife where they've come to me and said, Daddy, I'm sorry. Honey, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? And what's in me is no, I won't. Now, why would that be in me? Because I want to stay mad. Now, am I so different than you? Aren't you tempted to say, sure, but you want to nurse the bitterness and the anger. Don't do it. Don't do it. Deal honestly.

If someone asks you to forgive them, don't say, it's no big deal. Don't say, don't worry about it. If they've sinned against you, recognize what's being asked. They're saying, can we have peace? And you better answer honestly. And you better answer yes. Because if you won't forgive others their sins against you, then your Heavenly Father will not forgive your sins against Him. We'd like for there to be some gray area in the middle of that. Where it's like, are we intended to, or we will eventually, or some other thing. But Jesus doesn't speak in this place with this subjectivity. He says, if you will not forgive, you will not be forgiven. Forgiveness is the pinnacle of love. Now here's a question, or an observation and then a question. My observation is that early on in a relationship, people are likely to forgive. But as the relationship goes on, they become less likely to forgive, less inclined towards it.

We're in their first year of marriage or their first year on the job. They're more inclined to forgive when they're sinned against. But as the years march on and we get into a decade or two decades of marriage and life and stuff, we're less likely to forgive. Why is that? It's contrary to what it should be. As we grow as Christians, we should become more forgiving. But in our relationships with one another, I think that our natural desires run in the opposite direction. We become less likely to forgive. And do you know what we all say is the reason why we don't want to forgive people? Why don't we forgive people? What? They keep doing the same thing. Here's what you say. It doesn't work. Forgiveness doesn't work. I can't tell you how many times I've thought that, and I can't tell you how many times I've heard that. So here's my question. What's forgiveness supposed to do?

What's it supposed to accomplish? Do you know why we say forgiveness doesn't work? Because we think that forgiveness means if I forgive you, we're making a contract where you will change your behavior if I forgive you. And when I determine that my forgiveness will not change your behavior, I no longer want to forgive you. And so we turn the grace of God into a manipulative tool that we give and keep at our own discretion. We refuse to make peace because we go, it doesn't work. The terms of my forgiveness are, I will forgive you if you don't do that again. Are we unique in this? No. When Peter came up to Jesus, he asked him, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven. Which is not to say 490. But to say, so long as your brother comes to you and confesses his sins to you, you are to forgive.

But we like to keep track, don't we? Instead of making peace, we sow a field of conflict. We can remember past offenses like they happened yesterday. They could have been 10 years ago and we still talk about it like it was yesterday. That is awful sin. That is awful sin. Because what we're demonstrating loudly is I'm unwilling to forgive. I have not forgiven. I will not forgive. They owe. And until they pay, They owe. And I'm keeping track. If that sort of scorekeeping marks your life, you are in danger of hell. I don't know how else to say it to you. It's a big deal. Whatever else you've got going on in your life and whatever else you think is important, whatever else has captivated your mind, if you keep track of everyone else's sins and you can remember what happened five years ago like it happened five minutes ago, you're not a Christian. It's the exact opposite of being a peacemaker.

You're a conflict maker. No, I'm not a conflict. They did it. I remember what they did. I'm not the one that made conflict. They made the conflict. One of the things that we say to people in premarital counseling, when we talk about fighting, one of the rules is you may not bring up the past. Confess your sins. When you have a problem in your marriage, you will have them, and they'll be miserable, and they'll be difficult, and you'll be full of all kinds of temptations, and you'll commit all kinds of sins. When it comes time to confess your sins and to seek forgiveness, and you ask for forgiveness, and your spouse grants forgiveness, set up a pile of stones like the Israelites used to do and say, this far the Lord's been with us. This conflict is over now. It's over. And it's not going to come back up in six months when you do something similar. And the reason we tell young married couples that is because they're inclined to do the opposite. To not make peace, but to make strife.

How sweet it is when brothers dwell together in unity. Don't use the excuse that forgiveness doesn't work. I try to make peace, but it doesn't work. The scripture addresses even that thought. In Romans 12, Paul says, if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. What is he doing? He's leaving room to say, there will be people and there will be circumstances in your life. You are not able to have peace. But so far as it depends on you, there should be peace. You can't control other people, but you must control yourself. And what I find is that when we refuse to control ourselves and our own temptations and our own desires, the thing that swoops right in after it is, I will control you. I will manipulate you because I will not control myself. I will not discipline myself to be merciful, to be forgiving, to be kind, to be peaceful. And so what I will do is create a list and dictate to you what you must do to have peace with me.

And I may not tell you what's on that list. Only when you fail will I let you know that you did something wrong. That's an awful marriage to live in. There's old quotes that go around. He says, you know, bitterness is letting somebody else's failures live in your mind rent-free. Some of you guys have probably heard things like this. And there's truth in that sort of thing so far as it goes. But forgiveness, what is it supposed to accomplish? If it doesn't accomplish the work of making the other person change, that change that you want to see in them is the work of the Holy Spirit. It's not your work. It's not your work. You can't make other people change. Those of you who have young children, you think, we're going to do it right, and we're going to make our kids do just like this. Okay. I'll check in with you in five, ten years. Whenever you realize, it's not working. What's wrong with my kids? Same thing that's wrong with every other kid. Same thing that's wrong with you.

You can't make other people change. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. You can ask God and you should ask God to change them and to change you. But forgiveness is not the means by which that happens often. And if God does use your forgiveness to change that person, it's still him that's doing the work. I've experienced in my life that God has used the forgiveness of other people to change me. Not entirely and not perfectly, but he's used their forgiveness to discipline me. Because I think, I wouldn't do that if I were in their shoes. If someone had sinned against me the way I sinned against them, yep, that wouldn't get written in the book that goes in the back pocket. But they forgive. They say, yeah, that is what you did. And yes, it really did hurt. And you really shouldn't have done that. And we're going to have to keep cleaning up the mess from what you did. But I forgive you. That's powerful. But only if the Holy Spirit causes it to grow.

people's behavior and whether they change as having anything to do with whether or not you should forgive one another or make peace. You make peace with one another because God's made peace with you. Because if you don't, hell is waiting for you. And because it's a fruit that he's pleased to produce in you. So what is the fruit of forgiveness? Well, most obviously peace, right? But this passage also tells us that those who are peacemakers, blessed are those who are peacemakers. for they shall be called sons of God. That's the fruit of forgiveness, is that you'll be called a son of God. You will become one of God's children. Forgiveness, peacemaking, is what proves your place in God's family. In God's house, there will be no fighting, no bickering, no sin. As his children, you won't do what you do now. You'll love perfectly as you've been loved.

And so in this life, and until that time comes, your work is to practice. If God's children in eternity will be at peace with him and with one another, then that ought to be a defining feature of our lives now that testifies to his work and to his goodness and to his mercy. And it should be evident to other people. Some of you in premarital counseling, sometimes one of the things we ask couples is, What sort of conflict did you see between your parents growing up? And the answers run the whole gamut. You'll have people who say, you know, there was physical and all kinds of abuse. I never knew my dad. There's answers over at that end of the spectrum, like real big problems. Our house was a revolving door for relationships for mom. Screaming, yelling, hollering, police, drugs, alcohol, you know, lots of conflict.

Or on the other side, you get people who say, I never saw my parents fight. And everything in between. Now kids in either one of those situations, and actually many in between, don't know how to make peace then in their homes or with the people around them. The one lives in complete chaos and says, there's never peace. We've really given up on the hope of that. We're just trying to survive. We're just trying to stay alive and have food to eat and have a roof over our head. And that's life. Peace is just not something we consider. On the other end, the kid says, I've never actually seen a conflict or how it's resolved. So wherever you've come from, whatever you've seen, whatever your experience has been, if you're a Christian, peace is what you're to pursue. Whether you've never seen it because your parents hid all their fights from you, or whether you've never seen it because you didn't have two parents, your job's to seek after peace. I don't know how to do it. Your job is to seek after peace. You can't tell me to do something I don't know how to do.

I am. I am. You must seek after peace. Because as you seek it, you will learn how and you will become a son of God. If you pursue peace with other people, and I think this is one of the reasons we don't pursue peace with other people, is that to pursue peace with other people, to engage in a conversation, a real conversation about what's going on, means we're not just going to address their sins, but what else is going to come up in the conversation? My sins. And I think many times that's the whole reason we don't want to deal with it because I don't want to have to deal with what I did wrong. I don't want to deal with the fact that I'm not perfect. I don't want to deal with the fact that I lied or I'm lazy or I sinned in any way. And what we're saying is I don't want my sins dealt with. And so we get what we want, which is no peace. Pursuing peace with one another means always keeping your own sins at the forefront of your mind. And you might think that's an awful way to live.

And what I'd say to you is you're dealing with them constantly anyway. You would do well to prepare for them. It's as though you could live in Phoenix, Arizona and say, I'm not going to deal with the fact that it's a desert. It's hot. You have to have water. If you live in Phoenix, Arizona, you don't go anywhere without water. You just don't. Because if your car breaks down on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere and you got no water and it's 130 degrees outside, you are in trouble. So you're forced to deal with it. You must deal with it. And the fool is the one who says, I'm not going to worry about that. The wise man says, I live in a desert. It only makes sense that I would deal with the circumstances in which I find myself. And so if we would take water with us in the desert, we ought also to deal with our sins in this life. You're not going to avoid them. Refusing to deal with them does not make them go away, and it certainly doesn't make other people able to process them better. It does not bring peace. It's of immeasurable value to remember,

that you have a beam in your own eye, which is a passage that we'll come to in due time. It keeps you humble. When you see your own sins, you have occasion to confess your sins and to seek peace with God and with others. This is what God's children do. If there's to be peace in your marriage, if there's to be peace with your children, this is what has to happen. There has to be confession of sin. There has to be, because this is what it means to be a son of God. There is no other description of it given here. A peacemaker will be a son of God, shall be called the son of God. So to wrap up, what's the application? Well, the whole sermon's been application because the text is very simple. Pursue peace quickly and frequently. This is the way you will draw near to God and be assured of his fatherly love and kindness toward you and be helped to extend that same mercy and love to others.

Do not harbor bitterness or keep accounts of wrong suffered. When you see your frustration with someone welling up inside of you, and it's like, they actually haven't done anything. But you're like, I know that they're going to do that thing. And they did it last week. And I remember, and you start to see how angry you're getting. They're not even here. And you see that you're getting angry and frustrated and worried and tied up in knots about it. Repent. Call your spouse or your friend and say, you know, I sinned against you today because I was upset that you might have sinned against me. Please forgive me for thinking so poorly of you while you were away. God promises in the Psalms to remember our sins no more, to wash them away, and to forget them. Now, I bet there's some of you in here who say, yeah, but there are some sins that we have to remember so that we don't get harmed again. And I say, they're...

There are sins that get close to crimes that we need to keep track of and do all we can to prevent from happening again. But the meat and potatoes of the Christian life is forgiveness and forgetting. That's the norm of the Christian life. As far as the East is from the West, so far has God removed your sins from you. They're out of his sight and they're out of his mind. Shouldn't other people's sins be that far away from us then? That's what making peace is going to take. So when Paul says, so much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men, he's saying this is the work that you're going to have to do in your own head, between your own ears, when the person's not even there, you're going to have to do the work of making peace. And God will be glorified and he'll help you in it as you do it. And so make peace with God. Lead others to peace with God. Make peace with those that he's put you in relationship with. When you don't want to forgive, do what you should, not what you want.

And you'll find that with practice and dependence on God, you'll grow in this grace. Let's pray.