SPEAKER_00: Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Racine, Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00: So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, or just folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened.
SPEAKER_00: It's something God is still doing.
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this week's message.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: I'm my name is John.
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the pastors here at Resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: And uh, if you have your Bibles with you, we're in uh the Gospel of Matthew in the fifth chapter.
SPEAKER_01: And we are so happy to have you here.
SPEAKER_01: Um, as Pastor Ryan mentioned at the beginning, and as you can see behind me, we are in uh a sermon series called Back to the Basics.
SPEAKER_01: And next week, Pastor Ryan's gonna bring it home.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna wrap it up as we head into the fall.
SPEAKER_01: And all summer we've been talking about what it means to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And as we prayed about it, and as we've we've observed the excitement here at Resurrection, we thought it would be important to get back to the basics.
SPEAKER_01: Something that too often I think as followers of Christ, we ignore when we create our own narrative as to what church is supposed to look like to best fit our needs.
SPEAKER_01: And so today we're gonna talk about being peacemakers.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna learn from our Savior about peace, the Beatitudes, this story that maybe many of you have heard before.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus gives these words blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
SPEAKER_01: The peacemakers.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to hold on to that word this morning, peacemaker.
SPEAKER_01: Because I think Jesus is saying something here that our world desperately needs, something that I needed to be reminded of this week, even last night.
SPEAKER_01: And I think if we're willing to be truthful and honest with ourselves as a church today, something that many of us desperately need as well.
SPEAKER_01: But as we enter God's word, let's do so faithfully in prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: God, you're so good.
SPEAKER_01: New mercies promised to us every day, your steadfast love that endures all things given to us each and every second of every day.
SPEAKER_01: God help us to cling to that promise and nothing else.
SPEAKER_01: Help us for a few moments here to learn more about who you are, O God, in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: What it means to follow you, O Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Help us as a church to be equipped so that we can go out into the world that so desperately needs to hear the good news of Jesus and share it by the very way we live.
SPEAKER_01: As always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that pass through my lips or yours, O God.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Christ's name I pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: On March 4th, uh, 1865.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think any of us were born then.
SPEAKER_01: Um, although we did celebrate Roy's 100th birthday last week.
SPEAKER_01: On March 4th, 1865, Abraham Lincoln stood in front of the United States Capitol and delivered his second inaugural address, something worth reading.
SPEAKER_01: What struck me in this, as I was looking for great moments of peace uh this past week, is some of the words that he said.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't know the story, and I think many of us do, the civil war had raged for nearly four years.
SPEAKER_01: Hundreds of thousands of Americans were dead, cities were destroyed, families had been divided, quite literally, a nation had torn itself apart.
SPEAKER_01: But by March of 1865, everybody kind of knew where we were headed.
SPEAKER_01: The Union was going to win.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the Confederacy was collapsing.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, just uh just over a month after his inaugural address, uh, Robert E.
SPEAKER_01: Lee would surrender at Appomattox.
SPEAKER_01: So we know where things are going.
SPEAKER_01: And if you read the story, not knowing what he's about to say, you might think here's the moment, at least in the culture I'm living in right now, where Lincoln can go, I was right.
SPEAKER_01: I won.
SPEAKER_01: You were wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Look what you did, look what this cost us.
SPEAKER_01: But as history records, our president says, with malice toward none and with charity for all.
SPEAKER_01: And then he talked about what will become of us in the future, what would come next.
SPEAKER_01: He spoke about the work of binding up the nation's wounds, about doing the difficult work necessary to create what he called a just and lasting peace.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the first thing about being a president.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know the first thing about being a president during a civil war.
SPEAKER_01: But I have to imagine that it will bring up all sorts of emotions that aren't holy.
SPEAKER_01: And when I read these words in the midst of that troubled time, I'm blown away.
SPEAKER_01: Lincoln seemed to understand something that I think we have a really difficult time remembering, which is winning and peacemaking are not the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they're never really the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: No matter how you feel, if your goal is just to win, peace was never your agenda.
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if someone needs to hear that today.
SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, church, I need to hear it.
SPEAKER_01: I need to hear it.
SPEAKER_01: I so often need to make sure that you know I was right.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that I was right?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not making eye contact with my wife right now, but I and I laugh and you give me some grace, but the reality is that's how you also destroy a marriage.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you destroy a relationship.
SPEAKER_01: You can win an argument and lose a partner, you can prove somebody wrong and never be any closer to them.
SPEAKER_01: You can get the last word, you can send the perfect text, you can craft the perfect knockout punch response.
SPEAKER_01: You can walk away absolutely convinced that everyone now knows that you were right and never, never make peace.
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder if sometimes we become so obsessed with figuring out who's right and who's wrong, who's winning and who's losing, who's on our side, who's on theirs, who's in and who's out, that we've forgotten that Jesus never really asked us to be good at winning.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Jesus never commanded us to be good at winning.
SPEAKER_01: He did command us to be really good at loving, though.
SPEAKER_01: And then he gave us a model for how to love, his very life.
SPEAKER_01: And right here in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will become children of God.
SPEAKER_01: Not blessed are the winners, not blessed are the people who always get the last word, not blessed are the people who never experience conflict, not even blessed are the people who just keep peace enough so that everyone seems happy.
SPEAKER_01: Now, blessed are the peacemakers.
SPEAKER_01: And that next part, for they will be called children of God.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, Jesus seems to be saying that one of the ways the world should be able to recognize God is by the way that we enter into broken places and offer peace, by the way we handle disagreement, by the way we treat people who don't see the world the way we do, by the way we respond when we've been hurt, by the way we work to put broken things back together.
SPEAKER_01: How many of us have sat in a conversation talking about those people?
SPEAKER_01: Our God calls us to something bigger, our creator calls us to something better.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus models for us a new way of living, and if we're actually gonna go back to the basics, then we gotta look at what Jesus teaches us.
SPEAKER_01: Do you just want to win?
SPEAKER_01: Do you just want to be right all the time?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm asking because I struggle with it.
SPEAKER_01: My understanding of God is the only understanding of God that matters.
SPEAKER_01: It's 114 churches gathering for worship in Racine and Racing County right now.
SPEAKER_01: Winning, making peace are not the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew doesn't waste much time getting to this moment, by the way.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't know the gospel of Matthew, the first four chapters move quick.
SPEAKER_01: We get this whole history that that comes from the tribe of Judah all the way down through David and to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus' birth and the story of these wise people, these leaders, kings, we don't know exactly who they were that come from a far-off land to meet this toddler Jesus, bestow some gifts upon him.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus is baptized by his cousin and he's proclaimed as the one that God is pleased with.
SPEAKER_01: And then he's sent into the wilderness, and he's tempted, and he's told that he can have all the things the world has to offer.
SPEAKER_01: And he rejects that temptation.
SPEAKER_01: And then he comes out of the wilderness and he immediately begins teaching and healing, gathering followers.
SPEAKER_01: And by Matthew 5, by Matthew 5, we find this crowd, we think maybe thousands of by the way, not just Jewish people, but Gentiles, which are anyone that's not Jewish, but a lot of Greek people, people from that area, the scripture records the places they had come from.
SPEAKER_01: And they're all gathered together.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's as if Jesus knew I got to start at the basics before the basics were even the basics.
SPEAKER_01: This is what life in the kingdom of God looks like.
SPEAKER_01: And he knew the moment he began this sermon, there were gonna be people there that did not like what he had to say.
SPEAKER_01: Because his kingdom was one of sacrifice, not domination.
SPEAKER_01: His kingdom was one of service, not being served.
SPEAKER_01: And so he begins to outline what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, and people gathered there must be looking at each other and waiting for the punchline.
SPEAKER_01: Those people aren't blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers.
SPEAKER_01: And these aren't eight steps to get God to love you enough.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't saying do these things correctly, and maybe God will bless you.
SPEAKER_01: No, he's saying the beatitudes describe a kind of life that can only be described as a kingdom life.
SPEAKER_01: When you receive mercy, how can you not become more merciful?
SPEAKER_01: If you've accepted the grace of Jesus Christ, why wouldn't you extend that grace dramatically and lavishly to a world that needs it?
SPEAKER_01: When we've been forgiven by our Savior, our creator, why wouldn't we be quick to forgive?
SPEAKER_01: We become peacemakers because we have encountered the Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_01: And here's where I think we get at lost.
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we think we're supposed to be peacekeepers.
SPEAKER_01: But we're not.
SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to be peacemakers.
SPEAKER_01: Peacekeepers, they don't want conflict.
SPEAKER_01: No politics at Thanksgiving.
unknown: No?
SPEAKER_01: No one laughed at that, which means you guys probably should talk about politics at Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_01: A peacekeeper says, Can everybody just get along?
SPEAKER_01: But a peacemaker says, No, man, something's broken here.
SPEAKER_01: Something needs healing.
SPEAKER_01: And this might be a difficult conversation, but can we have it?
SPEAKER_01: And can you actually listen to me and receive what I'm saying and be curious as to how I got there before responding?
SPEAKER_01: A peacemaker lovingly enters into a conversation.
SPEAKER_01: A peacekeeper just keeps pretending everything is okay.
SPEAKER_01: How exhausting is that?
SPEAKER_01: Biblical peace is not just the absence of conflict.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we encounter the real meaning of peace in the word shalom, which is defined by many words.
SPEAKER_01: It means a wholeness.
SPEAKER_01: In Hebrew culture, to offer shalom to you, to offer true shalom, would be to offer my whole self and to hope that your whole being is brought into community with God and then by reflection of God's nature, me.
SPEAKER_01: It's about restoration, putting things back together.
SPEAKER_01: Things becoming the way that God intended them to be.
SPEAKER_01: From the very garden, creation was perfect.
SPEAKER_01: But then what happens after they try to be God themselves and eat from the tree?
SPEAKER_01: They're hiding.
SPEAKER_01: They're not being honest.
SPEAKER_01: And then just a chapter later, a brother kills another brother because of jealousy and then arguments.
SPEAKER_01: No peace.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, church, Jesus wants us to be peacemakers, but he also wasn't someone who avoided conflict.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a God who just sits back and has this laissez-faire idea of love.
SPEAKER_01: This is a God who encountered conflict.
SPEAKER_01: This is a God who flipped tables, who challenged religious leaders, who confronted hypocrisy, who defended people, who defended people that others wanted to condemn.
SPEAKER_01: A Jesus who said difficult things, maybe is saying a difficult word to you today.
SPEAKER_01: A Savior who said a difficult word to me this week.
SPEAKER_01: This is a Jesus who walked directly into places that everybody else avoided.
SPEAKER_01: So peacemaking, it cannot mean never making anyone uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you think following Christ is supposed to make your life easy, spend some time with me in a one-on-one.
SPEAKER_01: We'll walk through the story of Christ and what's called the way of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Because love requires difficult conversations and justice requires us to speak, and peace requires truth.
SPEAKER_01: I actually think it's simpler than we make it, though.
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes reconciliation doesn't have to be this long letter.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes reconciliation can begin with I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01: Or you hurt me.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it can begin with I forgive you.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever had anybody just forgive you for an action that you know you were wrong in doing before you asked for forgiveness?
SPEAKER_01: That's an incredible feeling.
SPEAKER_01: That's by the way, what our God offers to us each and every day.
SPEAKER_01: It's important to remember that sometimes what happened wasn't okay.
SPEAKER_01: But you don't want hatred to reign over your heart anymore.
SPEAKER_01: That's different from avoiding conflict.
SPEAKER_01: That's peacemaking.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus says something that I got tripped up over this week.
SPEAKER_01: He calls us children of God.
SPEAKER_01: And he could have said anything there.
SPEAKER_01: He could have said, Be a peacemaker and your life will be easier.
SPEAKER_01: I'd be like, I'm all in for that.
SPEAKER_01: Be a peacemaker and you'll never have stress.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, down, sign me up.
SPEAKER_01: But no, he says, peacemakers are children of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I think as a parent, I've learned it's it's maybe because God knows that when God's children are about making peace, that our Heavenly Father, our Creator, will be reflected through our very lives.
SPEAKER_01: We will look like our parent.
SPEAKER_01: I think about my kids, and I'm not sure my wife had this in mind when she signed up for this, but my boys, they act a lot like me.
SPEAKER_01: And so every day, Andrea is assaulted from four different directions from some of the best jokes she's ever heard, and a lot of biting sarcasm and some uninvited advice, uninvited advice.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the mannerisms, expressions, all these things.
SPEAKER_01: But church, as a follower of Christ, the same is supposed to be true of us, that we would look like Jesus, that we would walk toward brokenness, that we would be curious about someone else's opinion, even if it is wildly different than ours, that we would actually be a people who are about forgiveness and not revenge.
SPEAKER_01: When you listen instead of immediately needing to win, when you bring people together, when you refuse to participate in hatred, through your actions, people can catch a very, very small or large glimpse of God, and that's what we're supposed to be about.
SPEAKER_01: And here's where the gospel comes crashing into this.
SPEAKER_01: In Christ, God reconciles the world to himself, says Paul.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't stand far away waiting for humanity.
SPEAKER_01: God comes to us in Jesus, and then God lives with us.
SPEAKER_01: God enters into our sin, God enters into our death, and on the cross absorbs all of it, all of it, the very worst of humanity, and responds with Father, forgive them.
SPEAKER_01: That's our God, the ultimate peacemaker.
SPEAKER_01: Before Jesus ever says, Go and be peaceful, go and make peace, Jesus greets the disciples, greets us, and says, What?
SPEAKER_01: Peace be with you.
SPEAKER_01: We don't manufacture peace.
SPEAKER_01: We receive it.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've received it, then why wouldn't you be a people that would want to make it?
SPEAKER_01: Carry it into the world.
SPEAKER_01: And this is not easy.
SPEAKER_01: I know Paul knew this in Romans.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says these really honest words.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Look, if it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
SPEAKER_01: If it is possible, because sometimes it isn't.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you can't control whether someone will forgive you, whether someone's going to apologize, whether somebody is willing to reconcile.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reality of life.
SPEAKER_01: There's also relationships that you need to separate from to have healthy boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: All of these things are healthy and normal, but peacemaking, peacemaking, Paul says, should be your first response that you would seek to make peace.
SPEAKER_01: Not what should they do, but what can I do?
SPEAKER_01: Have I listened?
SPEAKER_01: Have I apologized?
SPEAKER_01: Have I forgiven?
SPEAKER_01: Have I owned my own part?
SPEAKER_01: Have I refused to gossip?
SPEAKER_01: Have I stopped recruiting people to my side just so I can show them how wrong they are?
SPEAKER_01: Have I left the door open for grace?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you just need to ask yourself today, are you a peacemaker or a peacekeeper?
SPEAKER_01: Because one of them reflects Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And one of them reflects humanity trying their best to do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: Is there a relationship today where God might be inviting you to take one small step toward reconciliation?
SPEAKER_01: Is there someone you need to listen to rather than convince?
SPEAKER_01: And maybe the uncomfortable one, are you bringing more peace into the world in your home?
SPEAKER_01: In your workplace, in your social setting?
SPEAKER_01: Are you bringing more peace into the world?
SPEAKER_01: Or are your conversations and the people you surround yourself with, are they creating more division?
SPEAKER_01: Stating out loud who's in and who's out.
SPEAKER_01: God calls us to something better.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a culture that rewards outrage.
SPEAKER_01: That's not who our Savior is.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be about anger just to get attention.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be about division just so that people pay attention to you.
SPEAKER_01: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_01: We're encouraged to do something better, not sort people into categories, but to recognize that we are all created by the same God.
SPEAKER_01: Worthy of the same gift of the cross and that empty tomb.
SPEAKER_01: It's not us versus them.
SPEAKER_01: It's us and thank God God.
SPEAKER_01: This is hard to do.
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't really understand this as a follower of Christ, in part because I didn't start following Christ until I was in college.
SPEAKER_01: Now, many of you know I've known Pastor Ryan uh for a long time, uh, since uh we were in grade school together.
SPEAKER_01: And Pastor Ryan was always outspoken about his faith.
SPEAKER_01: I've told you this before, but it was in college that I really understood how how his faith had changed him, at least in a way that I didn't understand till much later.
SPEAKER_01: I used to get really annoyed with Ryan, um, and that continues today, because I would I would you ever just want to have an argument?
SPEAKER_01: You ever just want to have an argument?
SPEAKER_01: And and and Pastor Ryan refuses to enter into those, and I I can't speak for his spouse, but I at least with me, he refuses to enter into those.
SPEAKER_01: And not, by the way, not in avoidance though.
SPEAKER_01: I've sat with Ryan in moments in the church where he has modeled for me, you might be right, but they also might be right.
SPEAKER_01: I remember early on that I had to know all the things.
SPEAKER_01: I had to know all the right things, and I had to know the right authors to read about the right things, and I had to make sure I was saying all the things that lined up with the way I understood faith.
SPEAKER_01: And Ryan would irritate me over and over again by saying, Yeah, but what about this?
SPEAKER_01: Or I would come in hot and angry about something that he said, and he would receive it and say, I never thought about it that way.
SPEAKER_01: And it would become more and more infuriating until I realized that he was just doing what was natural for him because Christ had been such a part of his life for so long.
SPEAKER_01: He listened, he received, he tried to understand.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't always agree.
SPEAKER_01: He offered questions, a different perspective, reminded me that life is rarely black and white.
SPEAKER_01: He cared more about the person sitting across from him than ever winning the point.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I don't think winning an argument matters to him.
SPEAKER_01: But people, people feeling seen does.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's why in my mom's last days she would thank God out loud for Ryan.
SPEAKER_01: Because she knew that in Ryan I saw a glimpse of Christ that I so desperately wanted to embody.
SPEAKER_01: I think all of us have someone like that in our life.
SPEAKER_01: I hope and pray you do.
SPEAKER_01: Where you just know they're gonna be slow to anger, where they're gonna sit with whatever you threw with them, and they're gonna digest it, maybe even pray about it like we should.
SPEAKER_01: And then they're gonna ask questions.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna bring the band up.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna sing about the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: And and next week, Pastor Ryan's gonna wrap up this series.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a visitor, please come back.
SPEAKER_01: Um, if you've been with us all summer, if you've been doing the devotions or the Bible reading plan, we just hope that you've recognized that the way of Christ is actually a lot simpler than we make it.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let me complicate it or Ryan or or or even the church.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would go back to the words of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Look at his life, look at the way he lived.
SPEAKER_01: Be a people of peace.
SPEAKER_01: Surprise people with the way you see them, even when you disagree.
SPEAKER_01: Apologize to your spouse if you act like a knucklehead.
SPEAKER_01: You don't always have to be right, and you don't always have to win because we have a savior who did that for us.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, be a people who looks like Christ, because there are people out there that haven't encountered him yet, and you very well could be that glimpse into who he is and what he offers.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Let us pray to our Savior, and then let us sing to our great God.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, do a work on my heart.
SPEAKER_01: Put aside my ego.
SPEAKER_01: Let me claim you as the only one worth worshiping.
SPEAKER_01: You've already won, oh God.
SPEAKER_01: You are the way and the truth and the life.
SPEAKER_01: Help us to be a people of peace-making, not just peacekeeping, to confront those things that are unjust, to listen to those ideas that we don't understand or agree with, and to receive all people with grace, mercy, forgiveness, and unconditional love that you so powerfully and humbly modeled for us on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: We love you, oh God.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Christ's name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.