Welcome to Turning Point Weekend Edition. Where are peacemakers needed right now? War-torn countries? Political hotspots?
Even churches? Today, Dr David Jeremiah explains how you can bring healing by being a peacemaker. Listen as David introduces today's message, Happy Other Healers. Well, you know, one of the things that's needed in our world today are people who know how to bring others together and make peace. The world is hungering for that.
We have our institutions like the League of Nations, which was formed in 1920, and the United Nations in 1945. But what we discover is, as soon as those things get on their feet and the human element is displayed, they lose all ability to bring peace. The Bible tells us that God gives us the ability to be peacemakers, and when we find that opportunity at work in our lives, we find joy. Happy are the healers. Happy are the peacemakers.
Next, on the Weekend Edition of Turning Point. Mankind has been searching for peace since the very beginning. 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 eirene.
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-centeredness is a very core of depravity. But the Bible says that it is possible for 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 looked 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, as one writer has said, God, Jesus Christ, reached up one hand and took hold of God the Father, and in his manhood reached down 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, as 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 tie 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 14, 27, 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 going to 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. 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. Psalm 4-8 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 in 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 okay. 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 43? 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, their problems were, 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 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 or 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 Colossians, Colossians 3.15. 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 going to make errors, but the umpire of your soul is 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 peace that comes from God that helps you to do the right thing. Can I 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 Donna and I came to this church, it was 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, you know, we loved the church where we were. We had started it. We'd been there from the very beginning.
It was a growing, flourishing church and had a wonderful ministry. And then there was all of this out here God was doing, and we would talk about it, and we would be one day over here and one day over here. I remember one day we were on vacation. My wife had already gotten peace from God. She knew what we were 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'll tell you what I'm going to do. I can't get peace about this, so I'm going to get up one day, and I'm going to say, I'm staying in Fort Wayne.
I'm staying in Fort Wayne. I'm going to say it the first thing in the morning, and I'm going to just think that way all day. I'm going to ask God to give me peace about that.
Well, I did. I get up and start thinking about all the things that were 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 lived 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 of giving 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 all mess. And I said to Donna, what are they doing downstairs?
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 his 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 Donna, 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 here where it only shakes.
I'm just glad to be back in California. The peace 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 peacemakers?
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 and 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 somehow those barriers which have grown up begin to melt, and you see those people who have been estranged come back together. 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 saying, I'm sorry and crying and getting it all.
Oh, man, I'll tell you what. Blessed are the peacemakers. There isn't any joy in all the world like that. We're used to God to bring together those who have fallen apart in their relationship. Blessed are the peacemakers. You say, Pastor Jeremiah, where are peacemakers needed today? Well, they're needed at home, aren't they? You talk about a war zone. A lot of homes are the war zone. You're not at peace. There's a lot of hostility in our homes these days, and that's sad.
Some of it is always going to be there. I've always loved what happened to Charlie Shedd. He wrote in his book one time that his wife came home and they'd had an argument, and she put a note on the refrigerator that said, Dear Charlie, I hate you. Love, Martha. That's a good kind of hostility.
You can live with that, you know. But then I heard about another guy who was asked one time how he happened to have such a long and successful marriage. And he said, well, they had worked it out at the very beginning that if they ever had a serious fight and she was mad, she'd clean up the house. And if he was mad, he'd take a long walk in the woods.
And he said, you can pretty much say that the success of our marriage is that I have largely led an outdoor life. There's a lot of hostility in our homes, and we can joke about it when it's not serious, but I tell you what, when you see people that have stood in front of an altar and confessed their love for each other till death do us part, and then halfway into that relationship because of this or that, that marriage starts to fall apart. If you've got any grace at all in your heart, if you've got the love of Jesus in your heart at all, the one thing you want to do more than anything else is somehow, God, help me to fix this.
Don't let this happen to these people. Blessed are the peacemakers at home. Sometimes we need peacemakers in our churches. Romans 12, 18 gives us a little leeway here. It says, if it's possible, so far as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men. I don't know what Paul was thinking about when he wrote that, but I think what he was saying is that there are probably going to be some situations that may never get resolved, but as much as it is possible and as much as it depends on you, you do your best to be at peace with all men.
You know, the church is a place where we come to love each other, but if you watch across the country, and I'm in churches all the time and talking to pastors all the time, churches can become war zones too. James wrote in his book to the scattered believers in the fourth chapter, why are there wars and fightings among you? He wrote that to Christians.
Billy Graham was preaching on an occasion, and I read this. He said, he was reminding the people that in the second chapter of Luke that Joseph and Mary lost Jesus, and he said, where did they lose him? They lost him in the most unlikely place in the whole world. They lost him in the temple. Isn't it strange, he said, but he said, over the years as he's watched, he's seen so many people who have lost Jesus at church. How could you lose Jesus at church? And then he went on. They get involved in the disputes that so often take churches and tear them apart.
What color the carpet's going to be, or how bright the lights, or how loud the music, or how cold the temperature. And in all of the disputes, they get so caught up in that that they lose Jesus. The very purpose for which we come together.
What a shame. So sometimes in our churches we need peacemakers, don't we? I read a story about two deacons who lived out in the country, and they got into a real big fight over the fence that was in between their property, and which one of them was supposed to maintain it, and how bad it looked.
They hadn't spoken to each other for over a year. One of the deacons wanted to make peace, so he took up the courage, and he got his Bible, and he went over to visit his neighbor. And he handed the Bible to his old enemy, and he said to him, John, you read, and I'll pray.
We've got to be friends. Well, John went and looked in his pocket for his glasses, and he couldn't find his spectacles. He said, I can't read.
I can't find my spectacles. Well, he said, here, take mine. After he had read the word and they prayed together, they got up and embraced.
John handed back the glasses to his neighbor, and he said through his tears, Jim, that old fence looks different through your glasses. And I thought to myself, yeah, that's where peace begins, isn't it, where we stop for a moment and begin to look at things through the eyes of the person who we're not getting along with. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God. I don't know why this is, folks, but there's something very curious in the fifth chapter of Matthew.
I don't know if you've noticed it. But here in the ninth verse, it says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Turn over with me to the 44th and 45th verse of the same chapter.
And listen to this. But I say to you, love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who spitefully use and persecute you.
And what's the rest of it? That you may be sons of your Father in heaven. I couldn't get over the proximity of those two verses in the same chapter saying, in essence, this. There's something uniquely godly about a person who lives under pressure and in the pressure continues to seek peace when he continues to try to bring people together. The Bible says on two different occasions, when you do that, you give yourself away that you belong to the Father. You're the son of God. And I was meditating on that and it suddenly hit me.
Why not? He's the greatest peacemaker in the world. When we get involved in bringing people who are estranged back together, bringing people who are estranged from God to him, we get involved in a task that is wonderfully focused and godly. That is what God is all about.
That is who he is. He brought God and man together through the crucifixion. He brings man and man together through the Holy Spirit and the love of God that is spread abroad in our hearts. And then he says to us, if you will get involved in this ministry of reconciliation, this ministry of peacemaking, I will let it be known through your actions that you are my sons, that you belong to me in a way that you cannot belong any other way. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
Let's pray. Father, I just am awed and overwhelmed by your son's words concerning happiness. And I pray you will help us to understand in the very core of our heart what Jesus meant when he said, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall see God. Lord, today there's one somebody who has never made peace with God through Jesus Christ. They understand what it's like to be at enmity with God.
And there is perhaps in their heart a desiring, a hungering to know God and to have the barriers broken down so that they can know what it's like to know the Lord Jesus. Lord, I want to be a peacemaker today. I want to bring these people to you so that you can restore peace in their soul. So, Lord, if there are people who do not know you, I pray that you will give them the courage to come and give their hearts to Christ. Father, there's some families that are on the verge of brokenness.
And a lot of times, Lord, it's just stubbornness on our part, unwillingness on our part to take the first step, to initiate the process. And I pray, Lord, that if there are families, husbands and wives, maybe fathers and daughters or fathers and sons, and there's division and brokenness, Lord, I pray that you will apply your healing medicine to their relationship today. God, there may be somebody who has ought against a brother, and somehow before this day is over, they need to go and get it right.
Lord, maybe there's someone who knows of a relationship like that. Maybe they're friends with both people and they've not wanted to stick their nose in somebody else's business until today they found out that God says it's a blessed thing to be a peacemaker. Lord, your word cuts a wide swath in our hearts. There's so many things that you say to us, even from one simple little verse. Help us to do right, to know that someday we'll stand before you to give an account. Lord, may we do what you would call us to do.
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. We hope you enjoyed today's Turning Point weekend edition with Dr. David Jeremiah. To hear this and other Turning Point programs or to get more information about this ministry, simply download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smart device or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio. That's davidjeremiah.org slash radio. You can also view Turning Point television on free to air channel 7-2, Sunday mornings at 8, and on ACC TV Sundays at 6.30 a.m. and Friday afternoons at 1. We invite you to join us again next weekend as Dr. David Jeremiah shares another powerful message from God's word, here on Turning Point weekend edition. Thanks for taking time to listen to this audio on demand from Vision Christian Media. To find out more about us, go to vision.org.au
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