Happy Are The Healers - 29

Christian programs Turning Point with you division will reprise Mike as they to write about one's own country's political hotspots and churches to go to the river. Jeremiah explains how you can bring healing by being a place like this is that evidence reduces today's message every other humans. One of things it's needed in our world today are people who know how to bring others together and make peace. The world is hungry for that. We have our institutions like the league of Nations, which was formed in 1920 and the United Nations in 1945, what we discover is as soon as those things get on their feet in the human element is displayed 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 on the healers happy are the peacemakers next week. Mankind is searching for peace since the very beginning.

There are many today 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's 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 in just a very simple outline so that you understand what were talking about here. The word for peace in the Greek language is the word airway may it means to join together 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 in every honest parent knows it. They know that our children come screaming out of the world wanting their own way and if you don't feed him one night you find out how bad they want their own way. We are self-centered individuals and self-centeredness is the very core of depravity with the Bible says that it is possible for man who is estranged from God to be at peace with God in the book of Romans says it this way that we 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 barely 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 their 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. 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 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 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 all the wars over I am at peace with God. I hope that today you can say with assurance is one thing I know pastor I am at peace with God. But if were honest and we look at it. Our world 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 is a gift that we experience every day of our life. In John 1427 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 walking to the bookstores, especially the Christian bookstores these days 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. The answer is we are missing our inheritance in 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 48 has a wonderful testimony for all of us who are believers in I'm learning more more about how precious this promises.

I hope that your promise. It goes like this, I will both lay down in peace and sleep for you alone. Lord, make me dwell in safety.

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 filling your head at night and say the words 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 1/3 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 were save 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 wish that there was an index in the front of the Bible with your particular problem on it.

It says in order what to do. Turn to page 43. I met people come and asked me why God didn't like the Bible that way.

Well, of course, if the Bible had been written with particular situations so detailed it would've been out of date by the end of the first century would I mean their problems would you take a donkey or horse to church on me that doesn't really grab me these days. You know 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.

But 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 that and knowing all of that aren't there are still times when you're stuck because you got these two things you gotta decide and they both seem good and sometimes it's a difference between the better in the best of the best in the best and they both look like they're good options and what you do. What is a wonderful verse in the book of Colossians Colossians 315 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, called the balls and strikes in your heart. Let it determine know is not a lot of difference between a ball and strike under most circumstances just a little bit the umpire has to stand back there and watching it has to have everything perspective and and you know he's human so you can make errors, but the umpire of your soul not make any errors in the Bible says when you have two things and you can decide what to do and are 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 is this peace that comes from God that helps you to do the right thing. Can I get a witness know I'm talking about you try to explain that to somebody how do you know you did the right thing while I just have peace from God when they look at you like they think you're a mystic or something, maybe going to 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 ever made. We don't want to make one any harder than that. It was hard and we couldn't decide we didn't know we love the church where we were with started it. We been there from the very beginning. The growing flourishing church and had a wonderful ministry. And then there was all of this out here God was doing in we would talk about it we would be one day over here in one day over here. I remember when they were on vacation. My wife, it already gotten peace from God.

She knew what were supposed to do it, just have 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 of God himself came down and told you to go to California you still would 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 going to do.

I can get peace about this so I want to get up one day and I want to say I'm staying the four-way standard for when to say the first thing in the morning and I'm just think that will them and ask God to give me peace about that while I did I get up and start thinking about all things are going on in the patient and boy it just didn't happen.

I just didn't have a piece 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 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 a given piece we receded 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 messed and I said to Donna, what are they doing downstairs. We found out later they were doing anything. We've just been talking about one of our fears about coming to California that they have always earthquakes out here. Fort Wayne had a nurse. Can you believe it right at the very time we were talking about it now.

God always give us peace quite that clearly. I want you to understand enough 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 and I was just back in the Midwest and they had tornado watches all through the whole week. I was so glad the comebacker word only shakes. I'm just glad to be back in California 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 showing you what to do.

So when we got we got to peace with God. That's when we become a Christian in the wars over and 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 Wendy rules in your heart by his peace.

Well if that's the truth if that's what God has given to us than 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. One of the most obvious things to me is that if were 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 in the 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 was 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 were 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 man into a relationship with God as it is bringing a strange demand back into a relationship with whom they have become enemies bringing man and man together.

You know, let me ask you a question class.

What is the opposite of a peacemaker, a troublemaker doesn't harness it.

How many times do we have the option in our life to take the high road or the low road to take the role 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 word today about all of the people 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 are grown up again the melting you see those people who have been a strange 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 him and say I'm sorry and crying and getting it all all minutes. I'll tell you what Blessed are the peacemakers. 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 say pastor Jeremiah where are peacemakers needed today. While there needed at home working. You talk about a war zone. A lot of homes in the war zone. You're not at peace was 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 should he wrote in his book. One time that his wife came home and had an argument put a note on the refrigerator that said, dear Charlie, I hate you. Love, Martha. That's a good, hostile you can live with that. You know what that 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 it worked out at the very beginning that if they ever had a serious fight and she was mad she clean up the house and if he was mad he take a long walk in the woods. 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 confess 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 got any grace at all in your heart you got the love of Jesus in your heart and all the one thing you want to do more.

Anything else is somehow God help me to fix. That's don't let this happen to these people. Blessed are the peacemakers at home. Sometimes we need peacemakers in our churches. Romans 1218, 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 probably going to be some situations it may never get resolved but is much as it is possible and is 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. In it, and I'm in churches all the time and talking to pastors all time churches can become more zones to James wrote in his book to the scattered believers in the fourth chapter he said why are there wars and findings among you, he wrote that the Christians Billy Graham was preaching on occasion I read Misty said he was reminding the people that in the second chapter of Luke, Joseph and Mary lost Jesus and he said were today losing they lost him in the most unlikely place in the whole world. They lost them in the temple. Isn't it strange he said what 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 anyone on the get involved in the disputes that so often take churches and tear them apart. What color the carpets going to be or how bright the lights are 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 no way 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 the property in which what I was supposed to maintain it and how bad it looked.

They had spoken each other for over a year. One of the deacons wanted to make peace solely took up the courage and got his Bible and he went over to visit his neighbor Eddie handed the Bible to his old enemy, and he said in John you read now pray we gotta be friends will John went and looked in his pocket for his glasses and he couldn't find the spectacles that I can't read. I can't find my spectacles. We sit here, take mine after he read the word and they prayed together they got up and embraced, John handed back glasses to his neighbor and he said through his tears. Jim metal fence looks different. Glasses I thought to myself yeah that's where peace begins. Isn't it where we stopped for a moment and began to look at things through the eyes of the person who when I get 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 watch 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 a way that you belong to the father.

Here the sun of God, and I was meditating on that and it suddenly hit me, why not face the greatest pacemaker 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 sons of God. Father, I just am on an 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 are some 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 of 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. What 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 are fathers and sons and there's division and brokenness. Lord I pray that you will apply your healing medicine to the relationship. Today got there may be somebody who has fought against a brother and somehow before this day is over. They need to go and get it right Lord.

Maybe there someone who knows of a relationship like that.

Maybe their friends with both people and they'd 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 or near word cuts a wide swath in our hearts are so many things that you say to us, even from one simple little verse helpless to do right to know that someday will stand before you to give an account.

Or maybe do what you would call us to do.

Jesus, we hope you enjoyed today's Turning Point, weekend edition with Dr. David Jeremiah to hear this.

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