SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/25/2020
9:30 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “What
is the Meaning of Peace”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 5:9
Message of the
verse: ““Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be
called sons of God.”
We continue in this SD
on a quest to better understand the meaning of peace, that is God’s peace. If I asked you the question what is the great
enemy of peace you may perhaps say Satan, and that would not be entirely wrong,
but the greatest enemy of peace is sin as sin separates men from God and causes
disharmony and enmity with Him. When men
have a lack of harmony with God then they will have a lack of harmony with each
other. As we look around the world today
we will see disharmony most everyday and wars being fought most every day is
some place around the world. Jeremiah
writes in 17:9 the following “the heart is more deceitful than all else and is
desperately sick [or wicked].” I have
mentioned what Dr. Wiersbe has said about this many times in my SD’s “The heart
of every problem is the problem with the heart.” Peace cannot reign where wickedness is reigning,
as wicked hearts cannot produce a peaceful society. Isaiah 48:22 confirms this statement where we
read “There is no peace for the wicked,’ says the Lord.”
Talking about peace
without talking about repentance of sin is to talk foolishly and vainly. The corrupt religious leaders of ancient
Israel proclaimed “Peace, peace,” however there is no peace, and the reason is
because they and all the rest of the people were not “ashamed of the
abominations they had done” as Jeremiah writes in Jeremiah 8:11-12.
In Mark 7:21-23 we read from the
lips of Jesus “21 ‘For from
within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications,
thefts, murders, adulteries, 22 deeds of coveting and wickedness, as
well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. 23
“All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’” Here we have one of the lists that are seen
many times in the Word of God, and this list speaks of sins. MacArthur comments on these verses “Sinful men cannot create peace, either
within themselves or among themselves.
Sin can produce nothing but strife and conflict. ‘For where jealously and selfish ambition
exist, there is disorder and every evil thing,’ James says. ‘But the wisdom from above is first pure,
then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering,
without hypocrisy. And the seed whose
fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace’ (James
3:16-18).”
It makes no difference of what the
circumstances might be, where there is conflict it is because of sin. So if you separate the conflicting parties
from each other but do not separate them from sin, at best you will succeed
only in making a truce and we know that that truce will probably not last for
long. Peacemaking cannot come by
circumventing sin, and the reason is because sin is the source of every
conflict.
John MacArthur writes these very
important words: “The bad news of the
gospel comes before the good news. Until
a person confronts his sin, it makes no sense to offer him a Savior. Until a person faces his false notions, it
makes no sense to offer him the truth.
Until a person acknowledges his enmity with God, it makes no sense to
offer him peace with God.
“Believers cannot avoid facing
truth, or avoid facing others with the truth, for the sake of harmony. If someone is in serious error about a part
of God’s truth, he cannot have a right, peaceful relationship with others until
the error is confronted and corrected.
Jesus never evaded the issue of wrong doctrine or behavior. He treated the Samaritan woman from Sychar
with great love and compassion, but He did not hesitate to confront her godless
life. First He confronted her with
immoral living: ‘You have had five
husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband.’ (John 4:18). Then He corrects her false ideas about
worship: ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is
coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the
Father. You worship that which you do
not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews’ (John
4:21-22).
“The person who is not willing to
disrupt and disturb in God’s name cannot be a peacemaker. To come to terms on anything less than God’s
truth and righteousness is to settle for a truce—which confirms sinners in
their sin and may leave them even further from the kingdom. Those who in the name of love or kindness or
compassion try to witness by appeasement and compromise of God’s Word will find
that their witness leads away from Him, not to Him. God’s peacemakers will not let a sleeping dog
lie if it is opposed to God’s truth; they will not protect the status quo if it
is ungodly and unrighteous. They are not
willing to make peace at any price. God’s
peace comes only in God’s way. Being a
peacemaker is essentially the result of a holy life and the call to others to
embrace the gospel of holiness.”
5/25/2020
10:21 AM
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