Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

Please stand with me as we go over our current memory Scripture:

Matthew 5:6-8

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

And our memory Scripture “refresher” verse is:

John 1:1-4

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

“Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”

Today we will be reading from Matthew 5:1-12

And, we will be taking a look at the seventh Beatitude.

Matthew 5:9 says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

Peacemaker … what is a peacemaker?

The dictionary says that a peacemaker is, “… a person, group, or nation that tries to make peace, especially by reconciling parties who disagree, quarrel, or fight.”

I went to school with an anti-peacemaker. His name was Charlie.

He would go from one person to another telling lies about what the other had said or done. He would goad them with the hope that they would actually have a fist fight with each other.

If he was successful, he would stand back and laugh and enjoy the whole thing. Of course, he himself was too much of a coward to fight anyone.

I don’t know if you have ever known anyone like Charlie or was he just one of a kind? Probably not. Anyway, I think we can all agree that it is the Lord’s will to turn all anti-peacemakers into peacemakers.

With that in mind let’s go ahead and read Matthew 5:1-12

(Prayer for help)

Today, I don’t want to review all of the previous Beatitudes but let’s just take a quick look at a few of them.

First of all, the word blessed does not mean “happy”. In order for a person to be “blessed” there must be Someone who is bestowing a blessing and someone who is being blessed. In return the one who is being blessed blesses or praises the One who is bestowing the blessing in a perpetual cycle of relationship.

An example of this would be a godly marriage where the husband and wife are in a fully committed, loving relationship that looks for the best in each other; a relationship of encouragement and patience; a relationship where the husband blesses the wife and the wife blesses him back.

Now, just take that to the next level where there is a love relationship between you and the Lord with Him bestowing blessings upon you and you blessing Him back! What could be better?

This blessedness is the only true blessedness in the universe.

The world may offer you a cheap imitation of blessedness but it will never satisfy and it will eventually eave you sad, empty and looking for another “fix” of false blessedness.

OK. With that in mind let’s look at the three Beatitudes leading up to “blessed are the peacemakers” by starting at Matthew 5:6 where it says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.”

This hunger and thirst for righteousness in the heart of a truly born again Christian is an act of God calling that person into a deeper relationship with Him. When we respond to God’s calling to hunger and thirst for righteousness one of the things we will learn is to be merciful.

Matthew 5:7 says,

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.”

The truly merciful person will not desire mercy in order to be shown mercy but as a person hungers and thirsts after righteousness they will desire to be merciful because their Lord Jesus Christ IS merciful and their driving passion is to be like Him.

Allowing God’s mercy to pour through you to others results in the Lord’s blessings being given to you and you respond back by blessing and praising Him.

As the blessed Christian learns to become more like the Lord they will sense the call from God to be pure in heart as it says in Matthew 5:8,

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Now, we know that even the truly born again Christian who desires to please the Lord with all of their heart will never reach sinless perfection in this life. BUT … the Lord would NOT call us to be pure in heart and then leave us to try to accomplish it on our own.

When the Lord calls us to something He then makes a way for it to be accomplished by His grace. It is not by our strength but it is by His strength flowing into us and then through us that the Lord accomplishes His work.