A Chip Off the Old Block--Sermon on the Mount Series

            There was once a man who attempted to sail all the way around the world by himself. He didn’t make it very far before a storm in the Pacific Ocean destroyed his boat and washed him ashore on a deserted island. A massive search-and-rescue effort was launched, but the man wasn’t found until five years later when a low-flying plane spotted his campfire. The plane radioed the location back to a US Naval Base, who sent a boat out to rescue the man.

            The man was ecstatic when he saw the ship coming to the island. He ran out to the beach and started jumping up and down, and when the sailors stepped foot on the island he just started hugging all of them. They were about to take him out to the ship when the man said, “Could I take a few minutes to show you around at what I built during the last five years?” The sailors figured it couldn’t hurt, so the man took them over to an impressive cabin that he had made for himself. Then he said, “Here’s a garden that I planted, and I even diverted a stream that flows down from the mountain so I could irrigate my crops. And here’s a canoe that hollowed out from a log so I could paddle out into the ocean and go fishing. But let me show you the best thing of all!”

            So he took the sailors up to the highest point on the island, and there they saw a small hut with a cross on it. The man said, “Here is my church! This is where I come to worship God. I built it on the highest point of the island because I feel so close to God up here.” As the man was speaking, the sailors noticed another small hut with a cross on it about 50 yards away, so they said, “What’s that over there?” The man looked a little annoyed and said, “Oh, that place? That’s the church I used to attend.”

            Sometimes that joke seems all too real—that if a Christian were by himself on a deserted island, he would still find a way to have a church split! We are not universally known for our ability to get along, which is very sad on so many levels—especially in light of the next Beatitude that we’ll be discussing today. In Matthew 5:9, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” As we study this Beatitude today, we’ll see just how attractive this idea of being a “peacemaker” really is, and it should inspire us to have that kind of reputation in our own lives and in our church.

“BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS…”

            This phrase presents us with a clear example of how easily ideas can sometimes get lost in translation. Jesus was quite possibly speaking these words in Aramaic, which was a dialect of Old Testament Hebrew, Matthew then recorded them in Greek, and this morning we are reading them in English. Our English word “peace” doesn’t capture everything about the concept of peace of Jesus and his fellow Jews would have had in mind.

            We basically define peace as the absence of something—the absence of war or the absence of fighting. Its good to be in that kind of state of peace, but the Jewish people would have said that we have a pretty wimpy idea of peace. After all, by our definition, a nation like Haiti has enjoyed peace for a long time, but obviously they still haven’t had very pleasant conditions in their country. The United States was technically at peace with the Soviet Union during the Cold War because we never issued a declaration of war, but no one would say that our nations had a good relationship.

            Instead of defining peace as the absence of something, the Jewish people defined it as the presence of something. To them, peace was really the presence of all good things. The Hebrew word for this idea was shalom, and I don’t think we have any single word in English that’s just like it.

            When the Jewish people spoke of shalom, they probably would have pictured two things—the Garden of Eden and the kingdom of the Messiah. In the Garden of Eden, there wasn’t merely the absence of war, there was the presence of all good things. Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect relationships with God, each other, and the animals all around them. They had perfect health and perfect strength; they were surrounded by natural beauty that had no trace of death or decay. The ground was fertile and cooperative for growing good things.

            The Jewish people also looked forward to shalom in the kingdom of the Messiah. Isaiah 9:6 called the Messiah “the Prince of shalom,” and the prophecies about his kingdom describe not merely the absence of war (although that’s included as well), they describe an almost complete return to Edenic conditions—long life, good health, sincere worship of God, godly behavior, peace between men and animals, and fertile, productive ground.

            So when we read this Beatitude, we should think of a “peacemaker” as someone who works toward shalom in the lives of others—someone who not only removes a bad thing like hostility but actually replaces it with good things in the lives of others. When we think in these terms, we start to see how woefully inadequate our concept of peace really is compared to the concept we find in Scripture. This is never more obvious than when we have a fight or a disagreement or a misunderstanding with someone else. Our concept of peace tells us that as long as we are not actively hostile to someone else, then we have fulfilled the biblical commands. In other words, as long as I’m not doing bad things to you, then I’ve forgiven you and I’m living at peace with you.

            But then Scripture comes along and says, “Wait a minute! Don’t stop there! That’s the first step, but now how are you seeking to do good for that person?” That’s a much different way of thinking than our normal concept of living at peace with each other.

            I’m going to hit very close to home for just a moment. I think in a small town like ours, we are very good at maintaining this appearance of “peace” where we’re not actually doing bad things to each other because we know that’s wrong, but under the surface we’re not quite getting along as well as we let on. In larger towns and cities, when people have fights or disagreements they normally just end up avoiding each other. If two people in a church butt heads, one of them normally just ends up leaving. If you’ve lived in a larger town, you know what I’m talking about—there’s practically an invisible conveyor belt between churches that just takes people from one church to the next. People just sign their kids up for a different baseball team, or they join a different health club. They just avoid each other.

            Well around here, we don’t really have that option so much. You’d basically have to move away if you wanted to avoid someone completely, so in some ways I’m tempted to think that we’ve perfected the skill of putting up a good front. We mumble “hello” to each other and then we pat ourselves on the back for the great thing we’ve done, when all we’ve really done is the bare minimum that we could do to truly have healthy relationships with each other.

            I’m not going to lie—living at peace with each other is one of the hardest things that God calls us to do. But if we’re going to hit the bull’s eye on this one, the first thing we have to do is make sure we’re aiming at the right target! Peacemakers are those who work to see good things come about in the lives of others. Jesus pronounces a blessing on such people because, as he says, “they shall be called sons of God.”

“…FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED SONS OF GOD.”

            In Jewish culture, calling someone a “son of” something was simply a way to describe what kind of character they were displaying. For example, Jesus called the Apostles James and John the “sons of thunder,” probably because of an incident when they wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village of Samaritans. Judas was called the “son of perdition,” which means utter loss or ruin.” In Acts 4, the apostles gave a man named Joseph the nickname “Barnabas,” which means “son of encouragement.”

            So to put it simply, I think Jesus was saying that peacemakers are blessed because they display the same character as God. Its like saying that peacemakers are “a chip off the old block.” After all, God has set an example of doing good things even to those who are hostile to him. Notice what Jesus says just a short while later in this sermon in Matthew 5:43-45 [READ 5:43-45]. When Jesus says, “love your enemies…so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven,” He reveals that the idea of showing love is synonymous with the idea of being a peacemaker. That connection shows us that being a peacemaker is central to our mission as Christians.

            In John 13:35, Jesus told us as plain as day how other people would know that we are his “disciples”—a word that means “student.” How will people know that we are students of Jesus, that we are learning His ways? Here’s what he said: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35).” When people see us loving each other, then they will know that we are students of Jesus because they will see that we have learned his way of life.

            On the night before Jesus died, he prayed a very moving prayer that’s recorded in John 17—why don’t you turn there with me? In that prayer, people just like you and me came to his mind at one point, and what do you suppose his prayer request was for us? Let’s read it, beginning in v. 20. The Lord had been praying for the apostles, and now in v. 20 he says, “I do not ask for these only (meaning the apostles), but also for those who will believe in me through their word”—that’s you and me and all the other people who have been saved since Jesus returned to Heaven. What was his request for us? “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.”

            But why? What would be the result of this unity? “So that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Why is it that some people refuse to believe that Jesus came from Heaven? Could it be because they see nothing heavenly among the people who call themselves His students? Let’s go on to v. 22: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

            Do you know why some people don’t believe there’s a loving God in Heaven? Its not because they see tornados or earthquakes or because they get cancer or because they lose a child. Its because they see Christian people who can’t get along, and then they hear us say, “We’re God’s children!” If you see grown-up siblings who can’t get along, does it lead you to think that their parents must be kind, gracious, and loving? No, you’re led to think just the opposite.

            My friends, we do unimaginable damage to our proclamation of the Gospel if we cannot live at peace with one another. What does it do to our testimony if people see us fighting and then hear us say, “You know, you can have peace with God, too, just like we do?” Living as peacemakers—according to a biblical standard of peace—is absolutely essential to Christ’s mission for us to make disciples of all the nations.

            I’ve mentioned over the last few weeks that there are a lot of similar themes in the Sermon on the Mount and in the book of James (that James was actually the Lord’s brother). In James 4, he tells us exactly why it is so hard for people to get along with each other [READ James 4:1-2; when you read “murder,” remember that Jesus said harboring anger in your heart is just as bad as murder].

            It all really comes down to selfishness. It starts with the fact that my desires are at war within me; my sinful desires are battling in my heart for supremacy, and if I indulge them, before long I’ll be battling you for supremacy. My sinful desires put me in that mindset where I want what I want, when I want it, and from exactly the people from whom I feel I deserve it. When I allow that mindset to reign in my heart, its like a conquering general—always looking for new lands to conquer.

            So how can we become peacemakers, so that we can have the blessing of living like a chip off the old block? I think we’ve taken an important step today by realizing that we often assess ourselves by the wrong standard. We’ll never hit the bull’s eye if we aim at the wrong target! We need to repent of patting ourselves on the back simply because we’re not actively doing harm to others. As we learned last week when we talked about purity of heart, our hearts will not be pure as long as we assess ourselves by the wrong standards, because we will ignore the dirt that needs to be cleaned up.

            The next step is fairly obvious—we need to actively do good to others. We need to pray that God will bless them with every good thing in their lives, and do what we can to make that happen as God gives us opportunity.

            May we be a community that presents a convincing case to the world through our unity that God is love because they see the family resemblance in us, his children.