This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 5, 1986.
About this sermon
Christ’s peace is inseparable from his righteousness and fidelity, secured, oddly, by a warrior King rather than by the absence of conflict. Several passages are drawn together to show believers already partaking of that peace now rather than merely awaiting it. Peace, in this second look at the seventh Beatitude, is a conquest rather than a truce.
Sermon transcript
said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” That’s great, Gary. Father, our confession has been built upon the Lord Jesus Christ as he has been revealed to us in your infallible word. Lord, in these days when there are many attacks upon the veracity of your word, we would stand with your servants in every age who have confessed without flinching. Your word is truth. Hear us, Father, therefore, as we pray to you now. that our assent would not be of the mind only, but that our hearts would be assenting, and Lord, we would be determined to live according to your word in everything that we do. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
Well, for those of you who thought we would make a little progress this morning, I am sorry to disappoint you. Here we are once again in the seventh beatitude, the one about the peacemakers. We have spent a great deal of time on this beatitude. Already we have taken two stabs at penetrating it, and as we have backed up and charged forward, I believe we have in fact made some progress in distancing ourselves from certain approaches to this beatitude. We have distanced Jesus’ words and the meaning of them from those who have employed those words as a political motto. We have also endeavored to distance his words from those who have utilize this beatitude as an evangelistic motto.
In the one instance you have those who have applied the beatitude to the political situations of the world, to those who are involved in diplomacy and bringing about peace among nations. Then, on the other hand, you have those who have tried to, what might we call it, spiritualize the Beatitude and transform it into an evangelistic mandate, so that the peacemakers are essentially those who are concerned with bringing the gospel of peace to those who do not know it. Now, this is not in any sense to put down those who have committed themselves to bringing peace amongst warring factions in the world, nor is it to say anything against those who have been called of Christ to preach the gospel of peace. and announce God’s reconciliation with sinners through the blood of his Son.
But we have asked ourselves, what is it precisely that informs Jesus’ words here? Instead of the circumstances of nations as they are at each other’s throats, and even instead of the matter of preaching the gospel, and that somewhat narrowly conceived, declaring God’s glorious promise of salvation to sinners who turn from their sin to Him. Instead of these specific concerns, we have gone back into the Old Testament in order to try and understand out of that Old Testament what it is that informs our Savior as he speaks here. Our trip backward has convinced us of this.
The notion of peace in the Old Testament is deeply religious. As we have surveyed passages out of the Old Testament, it has become clear to us that the peace of which Jesus speaks is inseparably tied to righteousness. You can see that easily enough if you merely survey the psalm that we read this morning in our responsive reading, Psalm 34. But you may also recall that our trip into the Old Testament has brought before our eyes that for Jesus, the idea, the notion, the reality of peace is inseparably tied as well to religious fidelity, faithfulness. And here we have cited a passage as glorious as there is in all of the Old Testament, Isaiah 26 verse 3, Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee.
The establishment of peace, then, or the making for peace in Christ’s mind, is not some sort of notion containing its own morality. Peace for peace’s sake, peace being its own reason for existence, a virtue beyond all others, that that prize, the cost of which cannot be too great. Peace at any price? Peace devoid of righteousness? Peace abstracted from, distanced from, faithfulness and fidelity that is stamped upon the pages of the Scriptures, not in Jesus’ mind. The peacemakers of whom Jesus speaks have grit and integrity. and integrity that are measured not by the world’s standards or even its expectations, but by God Himself and His Word.
But we have gone further than this. For we have suggested in the light of movements and ideas and concepts and programs that are sweeping the world as well as the Church, we have suggested that the peacemakers that Jesus has in mind are not concerned with the creation of some sort of inner world of psychological tranquility, as if in view were what we might call a personal or personalized piece.
And this is so because as we have dug deeply into the Old Testament, we have realized that standing behind Jesus’ language was the image of the kingdom of God. And that image is something into which we ought to sink our teeth and can sink our teeth. The image is very real. That image, as we have studied it, arises then from the Old Testament literature in which we see the figure of the king, the king with his kingdom, or the conqueror. and that conqueror, that king, is recognized as the peacemaker. Quite ironic.
The warrior is the peacemaker. The warrior king is the peacemaker. It is then the conquest by the Lord of his enemies that inaugurates peace. But in so doing, this conquering Lord, this King, in his kingdom becomes the guarantee of peace for his realm.
By his power he is triumphed, and in his power he reigns and ensures The peace of the kingdom is sealed by the person of the king himself, and by his influence through his person, that peace extends throughout the entirety of his realm. That realm then becoming, under his rule, one that is anxiety-free and righteousness-filled.
So then, we have concluded that from the Old Testament we might well say, peace, like the kingdom, is a place. It is a place in which the subjects of the But propounding such a doctrine is filled with great difficulty. First of all, as we look at the Old Testament, the kingdom to which peace was attached was one identified with the royal house of Israel and the land of Canaan.
But we take stock of both. Neither the throne nor the land, and it seems, despite God’s word, neither the throne nor the land seem very secure at all. The throne is toppled and the land is lost. What now of God’s word? What now of the peace in the kingdom.
Of course, the answer to all of this is that the temporal rulers of Israel, be they even David or Solomon, the temporal rulers of Israel and that temporal inheritance of the land of Canaan are but the occasion for God to teach us, all of his people, about the eternal Canaan and the heavenly inheritance. The earthly administration in Israel was but a shadow of the heavenly.
It is the peace of this latter realm, the eternal realm, and the great Prince of Peace, therefore, that become the focus of proper expectation. And after all, it has always been, even in Israel of old, It has always been the true nature of proper biblical faith to perceive the eternal beyond the temple, to see the eternal beyond the temple. And as a result, as all of this pertains to peacemakers, even as they arise out of the Old Testament, those then who make for peace in a true biblical sense have always operated in terms of a transcendent domain, a domain of glory, the domain of the heavens. And not only has this domain, this realm, this kingdom, been their orienting point, It has been the origin, the origin of the very peace they have attempted then to sow in the world. The peacemakers, blessed of Christ, make peace out of the peace of heaven.
But this introduces us to another difficulty, for this doctrine of peace is a place like the kingdom. The realm of peace, the eternal kingdom of God, is above, in heaven. But I, I am below, in the earth. How is it possible for me to ascend the heavens in order to live in the kingdom of peace, and then, by some sort of reverse action, condescend to the plane of the world to sow peace in it?”
Again, our eyes are directed to Christ. For by him, you see, we have been made partakers.” Take that word for all its worth. We have been made partakers. We are participants, partakers of participants in the heavenly realm by way of the work of Christ. He has died to the old order. He has died to that which is merely visible. He has died to sin and to the power of sin, and He has vanquished death. He has been raised and He has ascended.
But we are told that we who have believed in Him have died as well To the old order we have been raised in newness of life, and not only that, we have ascended with him into the heavenly places, and there now we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in him.
Am I speaking merely off the top of my head? Am I inventing this? Am I making it up? Read Ephesians chapter 1 verse 3. We have been translated out of the domain of darkness, the kingdom of darkness, and into the kingdom of God’s own dear Son. Am I making this up? Have I merely invented it so I have something to say to you on a Sunday morning? Am I spinning for you some sort of myth? Read Colossians 1. We no longer live in this present evil age, for we by Christ have been delivered out of it.
Read Galatians 1.4. If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. has it viewing a new world. Behold, the new things have come.”
2 Corinthians 5.17.
And once more I must mention to you in this connection the significance of your faith Because true faith not only perceives the eternal realm, which belongs to Christ, and rests in the certainty of its truth. Faith actually has the capacity to grasp. Faith has the capacity to grab hold of the reality of the unseen world. over which Christ reigns. Faith is the substance of things hoped for. The substance of things hoped for. By our faith, then, we lay hold of things for whose sake we have been laid hold of by God in Christ. The very substance of heaven by our faith is in our hands.
And now we who are the citizens of heaven, Philippians 3.20, We whose lives are hid with Christ in God, Colossians 3.3, become the very ministers of peace. That peace, I would say, which we have been privileged to enjoy above. We are peacemakers in the world in keeping with what we have been made to be in Christ and because of him. It is exactly at this point that a unique feature of the peace and the peacemaking of which Christ speaks comes in view.
It is also at this point that we are confronted with yet another difficulty for our doctrine of peace as a place like the kingdom. You see, there was one before us who was in heaven, who came down who came down as the peacemaker, and in his condescension and in his message for peace, speaking as he did about the peace of the eternal realm, there came to him nothing less than persecution and abuse and the opposition of the world. The world is interested in peace, but it is not interested in the peace of heaven. It is interested in a peace of the world for itself, in its own interests.
One of ourselves We, too, who have been exalted into the heavens with Christ, there perceive him and we see the grand marks of his humiliation. Seeing them as we do, by the Word, in the Spirit, we are constrained to be like him. Therefore we cannot content ourselves with a place beside the Savior in heaven. We, too, like him before us, must condescend. We must be lowered to the plane of the earth to live as he did among men. But to do that is to incur the wrath and hostility of the world. How ironic. The peacemakers actually generate war. And this war should not surprise us.
It stands, you see. in the light of Christ Himself. Is it not obvious that the force of Jesus’ last three Beatitudes, now culminating in this one which we considered this morning, that the force of these last three Beatitudes is generated by the persecution envisioned in the first four Beatitudes? Even then, here in the seventh beatitude, blessing falls upon those who persist in making for peace despite the hostility and the hatred they endure as servants of Christ. This is not plain to us by this time, then. and all the Beatitudes have behind them not just the thoughts of Jesus, but the very life of Jesus.
He was poor in spirit. He mourned. He was the meek, the humiliated one. the one who hungered and thirsted for God’s righteous rule. He was all of those things because of the opposition of the world to him, and yet in the midst of all of it, he persisted in showing mercy, demonstrating purity of heart, and being a peacemaker without equal.
The Beatitudes preach Christ. The Beatitudes preach the Lord of the heavenly realm. The Beatitudes here speaking in the Seventh Beatitude about peacemakers make it plain that we are the ambassadors of the kingdom above. We are commissioned to sow peace in the world.
Peace filled full of righteousness. Peace filled full of religious fidelity and loyalty and devotion to God. Peace that is beyond our comprehending. Let’s pray. We thank you, our Father, for the message that is given us by Christ, by the invitation that comes from his lips. by the wonderful experience of joy and delight that we find in Him, the One who reigns over the realm of heaven, and so rules over the realm of earth, that in our peacemaking, be opposed and abused and persecuted as he was, yet we shall gain the victory if, in fact, we persevere in peacemaking to the end. Lord, may it be plain to us that we are not here equipped with a peace that is of this world. Instead, Lord, we have within our grasp the very peace of heaven, and it is this peace which we minister in this world of strife, discord, and contention. Help us, our Father, to be resolute in our service to you.
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