Happy Are The Healers - Part 1

Audio on demand from Vision Christian Media.

Peace is thought a great deal in the Bible, how to be at peace with each other, how to have faith with God and more than one kind of peace at that Ryan Turning Point. Dr. David Jeremi considers the various kinds of face found in God's word and why living peacefully is a key to happiness from how to be happy according to Jesus. Here's David with his message. Happy.

The helis and the Bible puts it this way. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Sons of God. Matthew, chapter five and verse nine. That is our discussion for this Friday edition of Turning Point. What does it mean to be a peacemaker? You think we could use a few of those these days? There's not a lot of peace in the world, that's for sure. Every night I go home and turn on the television and what I see is just people fighting with each other. Protesters and police and foment and hurting and murders and all of this chaos that's in our world today. And then I read in the Bible. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall we call the sense of God and an all Christians. We need to learn how to do this. We need to learn this principle. We need to ask God to develop this attitude in us as we follow him. Well, let's get started with the first part of happy are the healers. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the Sons of God.

Mankind has been searching for peace since the very beginning, and the quest for peace among men has often been illustrated by the architecture of society. For instance, if the Statue of Liberty means anything, it means that we are offering a gesture of peace to those who come to the harbor and then who come to live within the borders of our country. In Israel, there is a statue which is called a statue of Shalom, and it looks out over the harbor of Haifa. In that war torn country, as a message or at least a picture of peace in the Middle East, in Tokyo, in front of the Tokyo station stands a robust statue with arms outstretched toward heaven. And underneath the statue in Greek and Japanese is the word a gap, a love, a testimony to the desire of the Japanese people for peace between their country and their neighbors in almost every part of the world. There is some symbolic representation of humanity's quest after peace. Some countries have gone further than statues in a country that I visited Santa Domingo. There was a burden for world peace in the heart of a man that was so great that he caused himself to be nailed to a cross as a sacrifice for peace in his country. The man, whose name is Patrice tomorrow plan to remain on the cross for 48 hours, but he had to cut it short after 20 hours because of infection that set in his body. The newspaper in Santa Domingo the day after this event read as follows. Crucifixion for peace falls short. The headline sort of summarizes everything that has happened in our world in man's attempt to bring peace to the war torn zones of our culture.

All of it seems to fall short. All of it seems to fail. None of it ever seems to reach its desired end.

Of course, we know if we've studied the scriptures at all that the problem is not with nations. The problem is with nature, the nature of man. The Bible says in James that the reason we war is because we have a heart problem.

The problems in our heart starts within us. If you could somehow get rid of selfishness in the heart of man, war would go away. But wars come out of our own nature and they will always be a part of our history. Until Jesus returns to setup his peaceful kingdom upon this earth, there are many today who are searching for peace individually, and they go about it through tranquilizers and liquor and drugs. There is a sort of peace, I guess, that you could find in a mental institution. But who wants that kind? There is a kind of peace that comes from being brainwashed. Some people don't know what the real issues are because they have totally been brainwashed from the issues of life. Sometimes we equate peace with controlled panic. But peace, according to God's word, is something that is available to us, and it is something that God wants us to have. It is quite evident to me that before we can give it away and be peacemakers, we have to be possessors of it ourselves. So I want to talk with you for a few moments about what the Bible says about peace and just a very simple outline so that you will understand what we're talking about here.

The word for peace in the Greek language is the word Irane A, it means to join together. It is a picture of two opposing forces once separated. Now being reconciled.

And according to the Bible, there are three kinds of peace that we can have. First of all, there is what the Bible calls peace with God. And the emphasis is on the little word with.

It comes as a surprise to some today that when we are born into this world, we are not born into this world at peace with God.

We are born into this world at war with God. The Bible calls it the old nature, total depravity. And while we don't hear much about that in our churches these days, it is the truth. And every honest parent knows it. They know that our children come screaming out of the womb wanting their own way. And if you don't feed them one night, you find out how bad they want their own way.

We are self-centered individuals and self-centered.

This is the very core of depravity.

But the Bible says that it is possible for a man who is estranged from God to be at peace with God. And the Book of Romans says it this way that we who are at enmity with God can be justified by faith and then we can have peace with God.

God in heaven look down as the original peacemaker and noticed and knew that we were estranged from him. And he sent his son into the world and he went to the cross. And there he hung between heaven and earth and paid the penalty for all of our sin. And I've always thought the cross was a marvelous picture of reconciliation, the very structure of it, with one part of it reaching up toward heaven from earth and celebrating this part of our reconciliation.

And there Jesus hung his hands out on the cross beam, as if to say to all mankind, welcome, you can all come. And he celebrated for us our reconciliation. So that is one writer has said, God, Jesus Christ reached up one hand and took hold of God. The father and in his manhood reached out and took hold another hand and reached down to man. And he brought man and God together on the cross. And everybody who puts their trust in Jesus Christ now is at peace with God. I have had the privilege over the years of sharing the Gospel with many people individually. And as much as I love to preach. There's something about telling people about Jesus Christ one on one that's very special and you can't really equate it with any other experience.

And over and over again is in my study or in their home. We've prayed and they've invited Christ to come into their life. It's almost a visible effect. It's a sigh of relief.

It's like, oh, the war's over. I am at peace with God. I hope that today you can say with assurance. There's one thing I know, Pastor. I am at peace with God.

But if we're honest and we look out at our world and especially at the Christian world, we discover that while we may have peace with God, there are a lot of Christian people who don't seem to have the peace of God. There's a difference between peace with God and the peace of God. The peace of God is that which God gives to us through his son, Jesus Christ, as a gift that we experience every day of our life. In John fourteen twenty seven, Jesus said, speaking to his disciples. Peace, I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives do I give you let not your heart be troubled. And Jesus gave that to the disciples because he knew they were gonna be in a state of turmoil very shortly through his death and his having been taken away from them. And he said in the midst of these very confusing circumstances, I want you to know that you can have a special kind of peace.

That's a gift from me.

If you walk into the bookstores, especially the Christian bookstores these days, you discover that there apparently is something wrong because most of the titles in the Christian bookstores these days are about how to fix what's wrong in our Christian life. And you wonder sometimes if the. Christian life really works, why is so much always wrong? Why do we have to keep writing these Christian self-help books to get people back up to where they should be in the first place? And the answer is, we are missing our inheritance and our inheritance is the peace of God.

I hope that if you have lost the peace of God in your heart, you will come back and find out what's wrong and get it back. Some four eight has a wonderful testimony for all of us who are believers. And I'm learning more and more about how precious this promise is. I hope it's your promise. It goes like this. I will both lay down in peace and sleep for you alone.

Lord, make me dwell in safety.

You know, the real test is can you lay down and peace and sleep? Can you go out of the militarized zone where you live your life every day, go back into the confines of your home and then in the peace of Jesus Christ, pillow your head at night and say, you know, the world's coming unglued out there.

But the real thing is I have the peace of God in here and it's OK sleeping in the peace of Jesus Christ.

There's a third kind of peace that I want to talk to you about, which I've called the peace from God. The peace with God is when we're saved. The peace of God is when we begin to realize what our heritage is in Christ. But there are certain times in life when we need the peace that comes from God. How many of you have a major decision that you have to make in the next couple of months? How many of you have some minor decisions that are facing you right now? Most all of us are caught in the web of decision making all the time. How many of you have ever secretly wished that there was an index in the front of the Bible with your particular problem on it? And it says in order what to do? Turn to page forty three. I've had people come and ask me why God didn't write the Bible that way. Well, of course, if the Bible had been written with particular situations so detailed, it would have been out of date by the end of the first century, wouldn't it? I mean, there are problems. Where do you take a donkey or a horse to church? I mean, that doesn't really grab me these days, you know? But what I want to tell you is this, that while you won't find necessarily specific information for every single decision you have to make, let me tell you with absolute confidence that most of the major issues are settled and settled very clearly in the word of God. God has spoken very clearly about most of the important issues. And then he's given to us stories and principles and illustrations that are timeless. And as we study those and extract those principles and apply them to the events of our life, we begin to see the pattern and we sense that's God's direction.

But having done all of that and experienced all of that and knowing all of that, aren't there's still times when you're stuck because you've got these two things you've got to decide.

And they both seem good. And sometimes it's a difference between the better and the best of the best and the best.

And they both look like they're good options. And what do you do? Well, there's a wonderful verse in the book of collections collections. Three fifteen. It says, Let the peace of God rule in your heart.

And the word for rule in the text. The word for rule is the word umpire.

Let the peace of God call the balls and strikes in your heart.

Let it determine, you know, there's not a lot of difference between a ball and a strike under most circumstances. Just a little bit. The umpire has to stand back there and watch and he has to have everything in perspective. And, you know, he's human, so he's gonna make errors. But the umpire of your soul not going to make any errors.

And the Bible says when you have two things and you can't decide what to do and they're not any of them in violation of the clear principles of the word of God, and you don't have any information from God that would help you to know this is exactly what you do, that there's this piece that comes from God that helps you to do the right thing, kind of get a witness.

You know what I'm talking about?

You try to explain that to somebody. Well, how do you know you did the right thing? Well, I just have peace from God.

And then they look at you like they think you're a mystic or something. Or maybe you're into the new age. You know, they don't know for sure what's going on. When Don and I came to this church is the hardest decision we've ever made. We don't ever want to make one any harder than that. It was hard and we couldn't decide. We didn't know we loved the church where we were. We had started it. We'd been there from the very beginning, was a growing, flourishing church and had a wonderful ministry. And then there was all of this out here God was doing. And we. Talk about it. We would be one day over here and one day over here. And I remember one day we were on vacation. My wife had already gotten the peace from God. She knew what we're supposed to do. It just hadn't gotten to me yet. And we were on vacation and I was struggling. So with this. And Donna came in and she said, honey, I think if God himself came down here and told you to go to California, you still wouldn't know what to do. She was getting frustrated with me. I want you to know.

And I remember I said, I tell you what I'm gonna do. I can't get peace about this, so I'm going to get up one day and I'm gonna say I'm staying in Fort Wayne. I'm staying in Fort Wayne was say the first thing in the morning and I'm going to just think that way old. And when I asked God to give me peace about that.

Well, I did. I get up and start thinking about all the things are going on to give me peace. And boy, it just didn't happen. I just didn't have any peace. I knew that I was on the verge of something new in my life. So since that didn't work, I thought, well, I'll ask God to give me peace about going to California. And for the next two or three days, I live like that. And God began to witness in my spirit. This is what I want you to do. We always love to tell this little story because God has wonderful ways give given peace. We were seated in the study in my home one day when this was at the very core of having to be decided. And as we were talking about this decision, it sounded like our kids were down in the garage playing with the garage door because my office was over the garage and it was just a mess. And I said to Donna, what are they doing downstairs? And we found out later they weren't doing anything. We had just been talking about one of our fears about coming to California, that they have all these earthquakes out here.

Fort Wayne had an earthquake. Can you believe it? Right at the very time we were talking about it now. God doesn't always give us peace quite that clearly. I want you to understand he's not going to send an earthquake. But in our case, we got an earthquake. And I remember saying to Don, I believe God can send earthquakes wherever he wants them.

And I was just back in the Midwest and they had tornado watches all through the whole week. I was so glad to come back or where it only shakes. I'm just glad to be back in California.

The piece that comes from God, I don't know if you know what that's like friends, but that is a wonderful gift. God gives. God gives you his peace when he's leading you and showing you what to do. So what do we got? We got the peace with God. That's when we become a Christian and the war is over. Then we have the peace of God. When God gives us the presence of his spirit in our life and we know that he's living within us, and then you have the peace that comes from God, Colossians, when he rules in your heart by his peace. Well, if that's the truth, if that's what God has given to us, then what could it possibly mean?

In this text, when it says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God. How do we take the peace that God has given to us and become ourselves peace makers? How do we make peace?

Well, one of the most obvious things to me is that if we're Christian people and God has called us to the Ministry of peacemaking, one of the things we need to do is figure out how we can get more and more men and women out of hostility with God and into peace with God. Take men and women who are estranged from the father and bring them into a relationship where they now are at peace with the father. Every time you win someone to Jesus Christ, you are a peacemaker. You're bringing somebody who is in hostility with the father together with the father, bringing them together through reconciliation. And Paul in the Corinthian epistles calls us to that very ministry that we're to reconcile those who are lost and bring them to Christ. That's what it means to be a peacemaker. The Bible says, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the glad tidings of good things? God loves his people to be peacemakers when they bring men to Christ, when they break down the barriers that have grown up in men and women come to know Jesus Christ as their savior. And then more than certainly here. The real focus of this passage is not so much the issue of bringing men into a relationship with God as it is bringing estranged men back into a relationship with whom they have become enemies, bringing men and men together. You know, let me ask you the question, class. What is the opposite of a peacemaker?

A troublemaker? That isn't hard, is it?

How many times do we have the option in our life to take the high road or the low road to take the road of being a peacemaker or the road of being a troublemaker?

God has called us as his children and he is saying blessed and happy and fulfilled and satisfied is the person who functions in life as a peacemaker, who brings those who are estranged together. I want to say a word today about all of the people who are involved in counseling. One of the great options, one of the great privileges these people have is to be a peacemaker. Oftentimes you sit down in an office with two people who haven't spoken to each other in three weeks, and God gives you, by his Holy Spirit, the words to say and the scriptures to read and the prayers to pray. And so how those barriers which have grown up begin to melt. And you see those people who have been estranged come back together. And if you've ever had the joy of a counseling situation where people came in as enemies and the end of the counseling session is hugging and and saying, I'm sorry and crying and getting it all, oh, man. It's I'll tell you what.

Blessed are the peacemakers there and any joy in all the world like that being used of God to bring together those who have fallen apart in their relationship.

Blessed are the peacemakers. You know, as Christians, we ought to be known for this principle. We want to be known for helping people get through their their difficulties, their divisions. So often what happens is we take one side or the other and then we just make it worse. Lord Jesus, teaching is very, very encouraging. But it's also confrontational, isn't it? We hear what he says and we think about what we do and we realize we have some work to do in our lives. May that be the motivation for all of us to be more like our savior as we allow these principles with the power of the Holy Spirit at work being developed in each one of us. Well, we're going to take a break for the weekend, and I hope that you will stay with us through this break through. Television. We're on television all over the world on the weekend. I don't know where you live. But I can tell you, you can find us.

We're on one of the networks now. You were on one of the independent stations near you. And we'd love to have you along with us on television. We'll be back again on Monday. And we'll take the second part of this lesson, Pappi, are the healers as we move through the end of the month and the end of this series. Have a great weekend.

The message you just heard came from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Dr. David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. Is God touching your life through Turning Point? Write us about it. The Turning Point. Post office box 38 38. San Diego, California, nine two one six three. Visit our site. David Jeremiah dot org. Forward slash right here. Ask for your copy of David's new Bible study. John The Divinity of Christ. It's part of the Jeremiah Bible study series. And it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah study Bible and the new English Standard and new international versions. And in standard or large print in the new King James. In your choice of several attractive cover options, visit David Jeremiah dot org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary. Hopefully join us Monday as we continue to be happy. According to Jesus, that's here on Turning Point with Dr David Jeremiah.

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